Ad Hominem

I often find that I do not understand charges of ad hominem. (For the novice: ad hominem is a fallacy of a certain sort, i.e. it is a kind of mistake made in the attempt to establish the truth of some conclusion. The phrase 'ad hominem' is from the Latin, and means roughly 'against the man'. Ad hominem, we will find, is a fallacy that illegitimately substitutes a judgment about the character of a man for a judgment about the truth of what he says.) I don't mean that I don't understand what's meant by 'ad hominem'. About that I'm tolerably clear. What I often don't understand is why in debate this or that person thinks his opponent is guilty of ad hominem. I suspect that many charges of ad homimen are misplaced.

In the course of my discussion of ad hominem, I'll explain why I think charges of ad homimen are often misplaced.

First, let us place ad hominem on the fallacy map. Ad hominem is an informal fallacy. It has to do not with the form of an argument but rather with the content of its premises and conclusion. It is, moreover, a fallacy of irrelevance. The premises of an argument guilty of ad hominem are not relevant to its conclusion, i.e. the truth of those premises (if in fact they are true) should in no way contribute to our confidence in the truth of the conclusion. Last ad hominem is a species of genetic fallacy. One who commits ad hominem invites us to reject an opinion for no other reason than that its source is tainted in some way.

Next let us have a definition.

An argument commits the fallacy of ad hominem just if it infers from premises to do solely with the character of a person that that person's views about a certain irrelevant matter are false.

The definition makes quite clear just what ad hominem is. It is a fallacy of irrelevance in which we are to conclude that what a man says is false because he and not his argument has some defect. (Excuse the sexist language. I promise next post to shift to 'she' and 'her'.)

Why take the time to define this particular form of fallacy of irrelevance? Why not simply counsel that when one argues one must be careful never to commit any fallacy of irrelevance? Of course all arguments in which the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion are fallacious. Why not simply say so and leave it at that? The reason is that ad hominem is really quite common. Indeed we humans seem to have a predilection to commit it. We do it again and again. Why is this? Do we perhaps feel a need to believe that those we condemn must be through and through corrupt, so corrupt that even their very words are always false? Do we perhaps feel a need to tear down those we condemn so that we cannot even grant the truth of what they say? These are but guesses. I'll speculate no further. This question is, in all strictness, not a logical one at all; it has nothing to do with logic per se.

If you've ever had a logician explain to you what ad hominem is, likely that logician will not have inserted 'irrelevant' into her definition as I have into mine. Why insert it? Why not leave it out? If we leave it out, we must conclude that ad hominem is not always a fallacy. For we might well encounter an argument in which both premises and conclusion are about the character of a man. Indeed such a argument might take this form:

Issac is quick to anger but slow to forgive. Thus Issac is a hypocrite.

In this little argument, both the premise and the conclusion concern Issac's character. But the premise is quite clearly relevant to the conclusion. (Those who are quick to anger sin against others and thus are in need of their forgiveness. But Issac only very reluctantly gives forgiveness to others.) Thus the argument commits no fallacy. We must conclude then that if we wish to say that ad hominem is in all cases fallacious, the claims made within the premises about a man's character must be irrelevant to the claim made within the conclusion.

Of course instances of ad hominem are likely not as brazen as the definition might lead us to suspect. As with other sorts of fallacy, one who commits ad hominem will likely try to hide his mistake. He will not say any such thing as this: "Issac is a mean son-of-a-bitch. Thus his proof of the Poincare conjecture must be mistaken." Rather one who commits the fallacy of ad hominem is likely to hide his error by misdirection. Often he begins with a discussion of another's views. But he quickly leaves off discussion of those views and begins a rant about the other's faults. In this way we are invited to reject the other's views though we are never explicitly told that his views must be false because he has this or that fault of character. The moral here is that we must take care both when we read the arguments of others and when we construct our own. Ad hominem can be subtle. It can attempt to hide itself. Beware, then, when an argument - whether your own or the argument of another - begins to delve into the life of a man. This is no sure sign that the argument is fallacious. (Recall the little argument about Issac.) But it is a danger sign.

I'll say just a few words about mistakes to avoid when a charge of ad hominem is made. (i) One does not commit ad hominem simply because one says something critical of the character of another. Criticism of character is quite obviously often permissible, indeed sometimes it is required. But one may not infer anything irrelevant about the truth of a person's views simply because one has found fault not with those views but with them. (ii) In cases where one wishes to determine whether a certain person is a genuine authority in some area of inquiry, one may quite legitimately say something about their character. An environmental scientist - a climatologist, say - who radically altered his views after he began employment in the oil industry quite naturally and inevitably comes under suspicion. He looks to have sold out. Now, we cannot say that his views are for that reason false - if we did, that would be ad hominem. But we can for that reason find him no longer a legitimate authority. He has likely compromised his objectivity and thus we can no longer look to him as a source of unbiased, expert opinion.

A New Type of Theodicy: Dembski on Natural Evil

I suspect that some will say that I've been overly harsh with William Dembski. Perhaps so. But even if I have not been overly harsh, let me now be unabashedly enthusiastic. Dembski has authored a quite extraordinary piece in which he attempts to square the claims that (i) natural evil long predates the Fall, and (ii) the existence of natural evil depends upon the Fall. It is here: Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science. The style is crisp and conversational with no sacrifice made to clarity. It is at once both insightful and creative. It should be read by all who take an interest in theodicy. I do hope that it has the effect that it deserves.

Dembski provides a short summary of his view in the passage below:

God does not merely allow personal [i.e. moral] evils . . . to run their course subsequent to the Fall. In addition, God also brings about natural evils (e.g., death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes), and lets them run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself disorders the creation . . .. God disorders the world not merely as a matter of justice (to bring judgment against human sin as required by God’s holiness) but even more significantly as a matter of redemption (to bring humanity to its senses by making us realize the gravity of sin).

In his argument he relies upon the view, held in common by such diverse thinkers as Augustine, Thomas and Calvin, that in the 'moment' of God's creation of the world, He knew all that would happen within it. (I scare-quote 'moment' because it does not signify a moment within time but an, as it were, all-at-once creative act in which the world and all its contents come to be.) God thus knew that humans would fall. He thus knew the necessity that He would have to act so as to reconcile fallen humanity to Himself. The plan to reconcile was two part. He would send Christ so that fallen humanity might be restored to the perfection it enjoyed before the Fall. But He would not do only this. He would also make the world such a place that the 'gravity of sin' would be manifest in the world about us, and in this way humanity would know the necessity that it cleave to Christ for its redemption. How must the world be ordered so that the gravity of sin would be manifest? It must be a world of death and destruction, of failure and pain. It must be a world of injury and disease, of hurricane and earthquake. It must be, in short, a world of great natural evil. The necessity of natural evil is a pedagogical necessity.

Let us be clear. God did not at the time of the Fall so transform a perfect world that it would thereafter make the gravity of sin apparent to us. Rather He set the world up so that from it's very start it would contain those natural evils (or potential for natural evils) that, after the Fall, would make clear to us the gravity of sin and our need for a redeemer. The the taint of the Fall does not enter the world when the Fall occurs. It was there all along.

We do here have a species of what metaphysicians call 'backwards causation'. Events at a certain time - Adam and Eve's fall - bring about a state of affairs at a prior time - a world shot through with natural evil. But they do not do so directly. Rather between the first and the second in the explanatory chain lies God and His desire to make known to us the wages of sin. The explanatory chain is this. Our world is such that, at a certain time and place, humanity will fall. God thus knows this, for God knows all things, now, before and to come. Thus God, since all-good, so ordered the world that humanity might be reconciled to Him. A world able to bring humanity to the realization of a necessity for reconciliation must contain great natural evil. Thus God so ordered the world that it contained great natural evil. Finally, in His wisdom God found it best to allow natural evil free reign even before the time of the Fall.

Note that this explanatory sequence is not a sequence of temporal succession. What comes first in it does not come first in time. Rather it comes first only in the logic of explanation.

So ends my little explication of Dembski's views. In a later post, I'll comment a bit. For now, let me say only this: I am skeptical that a world in which natural evil is given free-reign before the Fall is better than one in which natural evil enters the world only after the Fall. (Also I'm skeptical that Dembski does the views of John Hick justice. Indeed we'll see that Dembski's view, like so many other types of theodicy, likely collapses into a kind of Hickianism.)

Uncommon Condescent

Con`de*scent", n. [Cf. Condescend, Descent.] An act of condescension. [Obs.] --Dr. H. More.

The title of my post is a pun on a pun. I hope that you'll forgive me.

A few days ago I began to read William Dembski's Uncommon Descent. I'd like to take a moment to explain why I don't think I'll return.

First, let me say something about the tone of the posts. An anger suffuses them. Anger directed at whom? For what reason? The object of his anger, I assume, is that part of the scientific and academic community that refuses to take his work with any seriousness. He is quite thoroughly marginalized and will likely remain so. (I mean to make no judgment about the justice of this state of affairs. Rather I only mean to report what seems to me to be the case. Has he been treated unfairly? I have no idea.) Indeed the great majority of his peers will not even so much as take him on. Most, I suspect, don't think it worth their time. The few who might feel some temptation to take on the defenders of ID, moreover, fear that their peers would ostracize them if they did so. Thus Dembski and others of his sort labor mostly in scientific obscurity. (Of course they do possess some cultural notoriety. But this is due to the existence of a community of conservative Christians who find ID congenial.)

But even if I'm wrong in my speculations about the cause and object of his anger, I am quite certain of its existence. The anger most often takes the form of sarcasm. His posts are often deeply, darkly sarcastic. He lashes out at those who have denied him a place at the table, and sarcasm is his weapon of choice. This makes the whole of Uncommon Descent seem like one great fit. It's expressed not by cries but by the written word. It's a clever fit. It's a long fit. But a fit it is.

This is the first of my reasons to give up on Uncommon Descent. My second concerns not the tone of what is said there but the content. Dembski has a quite low opinion of those of his scientific peers who reject ID. Indeed he is quite often openly derisive of them. He accuses them of the most simple and obvious fallacies. He accuses them of bad faith; they quite deliberately, Dembski says, cover over the faults of their view. Now, it might well turn out that some form of ID will become the dominant paradigm within origins science. But no matter if this happens or not, I find it highly unlikely that the men and women upon whom Dembski heaps his derision are guilty of the sins, whether intellectual or moral, of which they're accused. They are not stupid and they are not wicked. Perhaps they are wrong, but their mistakes are for the most part honest.

Don't expect me to say anything about the virtues or vices, whether intellectual or moral, of either this or that foe or this or that ally of ID. Don't expect me to say anything of the vices or virtues, whether theoretical or empirical, of either ID or or the Darwinian account of origins. I simply do not know enough to make any judgments of this sort. In this, I am no doubt like the great majority. We are on the outside and will never know enough about the theories or the theoreticians to make any judgment about character of theoretician or content of theory. Rather we who are outside must look for certain marks of genuine scientific authority and make our judgments based upon that and that alone. What are these marks? Has a person been trained by experts in her field? Does she work at a place known to house experts in her field? Has she published in peer-reviewed journals in her field? Does she have the esteem of her peers? Do her opinions cohere with other experts in the field? Is she free of any entanglements that might compromise her objectivity? Most evolutionary biologists meet these criteria and thus we must trust them and what they say. (Trust them absolutely? Of course not. Error both small and great could still easily creep in. The mere fact that a generation of scientists agree on a certain matter is no guarantee that their opinion is true. But that they agree is good reason for those of us on the outside to believe what they say; for those of us on the outside, that the experts say a thing is good though not conclusive reason to believe it.)

Does Dembski meet these criteria to the same degree as they are met by his opponents? No. Thus we have less reason to trust him than we do his opponents. But even if we should have made a mistake in this, we still can say this with certainty: the charges of intellectual shabbiness and moral corruption that Dembski levels at his opponents are very nearly certainly false.
(Dembski does his cause no favor when he makes such charges. He alienates his peers in the scientific community, and he alienates those such as me who have insufficient knowledge of the content of the disputes to form any independent judgments.)

Grace to All

As I said in a prior post, most if not all Protestants hold that those who do not put their trust in Christ will suffer eternal torment. I there asked how this could be just given that many have never heard the name of Christ. I'd like now to sketch an Augustinian response to this question. After I'll explain why I think it must be rejected.

What form does that Augustinian response take? (I don't mean to say that this is precisely what Augustine himself says. I'm no exegete and will not pretend that I am. But if what I say deviates from the line followed by Augustine, it is still like that line.) The Augustinian response says first that, in this post-Fall world, all are sinners and all are need in God's mercy. It infers from this that all, if condemned to eternal torment, are justly condemned. But why then are some saved from this fate? God's holds out his mercy to some and not to others and thereby makes a faith that will save them possible. How might he do this? He comes to some as He came to Saul on the road to Damascus. To others He gives pious parents who raise them up in the Faith. But no matter how He makes their faith possible, mercy is His reason, for all are sinners and all deserve damnation. Only by His mercy does God save some from this fate.

Of course we must now ask this of the Augustinian: Why does God choose only some and not others on which to bestow his grace? The answer cannot be that those whom He chooses deserved what was given them. No one deserves such a thing. It is a gift freely bestowed. It is not something in any way owed. Nor can the answer be that God makes mercy possible so that he might thereby increase the amount of good within the world, for if that were His motive He would surely grant the gift of faith to all. A world in which all are saved is surely in total better than a world in which only some are saved. But if our question cannot be answered in either of these two ways, it cannot be answered at all. No other answers present themselves.

(Might we say that a world in which some are saved and some damned is better than a world in which all are saved? Might it be that just punishment is such a great good that any very good world must contain many instances of it? This seems to run counter to the love ethic that is so clearly articulated in the New Testament. God wishes that all will be saved; and the damnation of even a single one is a very great tragedy, is something always to be greatly regretted.)

So then God's reason to bestow His grace upon these but not those is left a mystery.

Before I begin to lay out my objection to this, let me give the Augustinian response to the complaint that God acts unfairly when He bestows His grace upon some but not all. All are inveterate sinners; no one can raise himself out the morass of sin by himself. Rather every man, if left to himself, will sin without cessation. Thus if God damns you, you only get what you deserve; and the fact that some are shown mercy does not change the fact that, if He damns you, you were treated just as you deserve. Put a bit differently: that God shows mercy to one who has sinned sets up no obligation to show mercy to all who have sinned. Rather the mercy God shows is a purely gratuitous act and in no way lessens the guilt of those to whom He shows no mercy.

Let me now turn to my objection to this Augustinian story. It was hinted at above and is really quite simple. It is much better that all be saved than that only some be saved. Indeed of all the goods that are contingent, i.e that could either come to pass or not, it is one of the greatest. (The only greater of which I can think is the Incarnation.) Moreover, all could be saved and yet it not be the case that some greater good would thereby be sacrificed. Thus God, who of necessity acts so as to bring about a very good world, will act so as to insure that all are saved.

I do not pretend to know how this will happen. Perhaps those who are not saved in this world are saved in the next. Perhaps those who are not saved in this life will live another (and another and another . . .) until they are saved. But however it will be done, to let even a single one be damned is contrary to God's essential goodness. Thus all will be saved.

This is one of the elements of my faith, such as it is. Indeed in a way it is the foundation of my faith, its central tenet.

Is God Male?

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has stirred up a bit of controversy. They have given their imprimatur to a host of new names for the Trinity. I'd like to focus upon one. It is this: Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-Giving Womb. Many conservatives, Albert Mohler and Joe Carter among them, have condemned the terminological novelty. They ask us instead to use only the names of God that God Himself uses in Scripture and thus ask us to reject the use of such feminine names for the Trinity.

My point of entry into this debate is the question, Is God male?

The simple answer of course is 'No'. God is not male. Male is a biological category; it is the category of life-forms whose organs of reproduction create sperm for the fertilization of ova. God does no such thing as this. Thus He is not male. (Christ was male. But does this imply that any of the three persons of the Trinity is male? Surely not. To use the language of John, Christ was the union of the Logos and a particular human male. Christ qua human was male. Christ qua Logos was not. The Logos - the second person of the Trinity - is not itself male, for like the other two persons of the Trinity it is not physical.)

But why then when Scripture speaks of God does it make persistent use of masculine language? One conclusion is immediate and obvious. If God is not male, when God is referred to with a masculine pronoun (or some other bit of masculine language), that pronoun (or other bit of language) is not literal. It is rather in some way figurative.

But in what way is it figurative? How are we to understand it? Here we must begin theological speculation, for Scripture does not provide a direct answer to our question.

I can think of only one answer to our question. It is this: God must be more male-like than He is female-like in some significant regard. Only if this is true is the use of 'He'-metaphor appropriate; if it were not true, i.e. if God were more female-like than male-like, it would be appropriate not to use 'He' in reference to God but rather 'She'.

So then we are driven to ask a second question. In what way is God is more male-like than female-like? Here Scripture gives us a hint. The man, we are told, is to rule over the woman in a marriage. He is sovereign there. (Ephesians 5.22 ff, Colossians 3.18 ff and I Peter 3.1 ff. I know that some attempt to interpret these passages so that they say that husband and wife are to submit to one other equally. This does violence to the texts. If left to speak for themselves, they make clear that the husband is at the head of the family and that the wife stands behind.) Moreover, men are sovereign within the Church (1 Corinthians 14:34 and 35 e.g.); women's roles within it are quite severely restricted, for they are commanded not to speak there. Indeed his sovereignty within both family and Church is what, from a spiritual point of view, is distinctive about man; if we put this characteristic aside, there is nothing to distinguish man spiritually from woman.

Second point: God too is sovereign. His sovereignty is of course infinitely greater than that of a mere man, for it extends over the whole of creation. Moreover, a man's sovereignty within Church and home is subordinate to God's; a man is, as it were, but a lieutenant to God the general. But nonetheless both man and God are sovereign within their particular domains.

My suggestion is this: it is the sovereignty evinced by both man and God that makes use of the masculine pronoun 'He' appropriate of God. I know that this is a mere suggestion. Nothing I've said amounts to a proof. But I do find appeal in the above line of thought; it is plausible. (It is no doubt accepted by many Christians of an especially conservative bent of mind.)

If my suggestion should prove true, we have a condemnation of Biblical theology. Woman is relegated to a lesser status; she is more animal-like than God-like, for like an animal she is not to rule but to be ruled over. She is less than fully rational, for if man is to stand as sovereign in Church and home it must be because his rational faculties make him suited for that role.

One last word and I'll be done. Perhaps we should pursue another exegetical strategy here. We've assumed throughout that a certain model of Scripture's inspiration. We've assumed that God Himself has made the choice to use masculine language in description of Himself, and we've attempted to find His reason for this. But what if it was not God but was rather man who chose to use 'He' of God? Of course conservatives will not accept this; they read Scripture in such a way that it is always God and never man who chooses the manner of Scripture's composition. But I take the argument of the above to show that this conservative view is likely untenable. If we accept the conservative exegetical strategy, we find that we must attribute a most pernicious sexism to God. I'll not mince words. This is heresy. Thus the conservative exegetical strategy is likely flawed and so should be rejected.

Forgiven

I recently had the pleasure to read Morris Dees' account the civil rights trial of James Knowles. Michael Donald, a young black man from Mobile, Alabama, had been lynched. Knowles was charged with his murder. On the stand, Knowles turned to Donald's mother and asked her forgiveness. In a quiet voice, she replied that she already had.

She already had. She had forgiven him before he had asked forgiveness.

What do we say of Donald's mother and her act of forgiveness? I can think to say only this: she was a great woman.

One can be forgiven and yet never have asked for forgiveness. Moreover, if one waits to forgive, one is not as great as those who forgive immediately. The great forgive even when forgiveness is not asked.

Why then do so many insist that God does not forgive unless we do some such thing as place our trust in Christ? This makes God seem less good than Donald's mother. God forgives all immediately.

I know the reply that will be made: God's justice demands that a price be paid for every sin. But this makes God's mercy subordinate to God's justice, and thus is just backwards. Before all else, God is love and thus His justice is subordinated to His love.

Questions about Sin and Grace

Over the past year here at The Philosophical Midwife, I've taken as my target the fundamental dogmas of Protestant Christianity. But I've really only scratched the surface. There's much there about which I've said nothing or only very little.

Perhaps before I launch yet another broadside, I should ask a few questions. I might well harbor certain misconceptions about Protestantism. If they are cleared up for me, I can invest my time here more wisely.

I have two questions. The first concerns sin and the second grace.

1. We live in a world ruined by the Fall. The ruin is not merely around us. It is within us. We ourselves were ruined by Adam and Eve's sin. As a result, sin is quite inevitable for us. We come into the world unable not to sin. All who have come after Adam and Eve have sinned. All who will come after us will sin.

But how then can we be held responsible for our sins? Indeed if they are inevitable, it seems a mistake to call them 'sins'. They are more like disabilities, something that we cannot help, something that it would be perverse to hold us responsible for.

In the above, I rely upon the premise that if we cannot help but do a thing, we cannot be rightly held responsible for it. I you deny it, all I can think to say is that here we must part company. It seems to me as obvious as any moral truth. I say to you that, if you feel it necessary to deny it, you should trace backwards and find the belief that leads you to deny it; and then give up that belief.

2. It is characteristic of Protestant Christianity to hold that only those who know Christ and put their faith in Him will be saved. But what are we to say of those who've never heard the name of Christ? What do we say of those who, though they've heard the name, do not know who He is? Will they be damned? Will they suffer because of an ignorance for which they cannot be faulted?

(This question occurred to me very early on in my religious education. I was brought up Church of Christ, and like most Protestant denominations, it taught that those who did not put their faith in Christ were lost.)

God surely could have insured that all would have come to know who Christ was and thus would have had the choice to either accept or reject Him. But He did not. How then can He hold those responsible who, through no fault of their own, do not know who Christ was?

Biblical Inerrancy and Errors of Transmission

Let me again take up my assault on the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. (As before, I say that it is the doctrine that the Bible, when interpreted appropriately at every point, is at every point wholly without error.)

But let us take a bit more care than we have before when we state the doctrine. In particular let us ask, What version of the Bible do we mean?

Versions of course exist. Not all include the same texts in the canonical set of Biblical texts. But let us put that issue to the side. Perhaps we'll return to it at a later time.

I wish to concentrate now upon errors in the transmission of Biblical texts. These can be of various sorts. When a text is copied, deletions might be made. Additions might be made. Changes might be made.

Such errors inevitably result in versions of the Bible. An error in transmission creates a new Bible. The new one of course overlaps with the old. But because it is not wholly overlap the old, it is not identical to the old.

I expect that my readers will be familiar with the Pericope Adulterae. It is the story told in John 7:53–8:11. There a young adulteress who the Pharisees are ready to stone is saved by Christ. Christ in her defense utters that famous sentence "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her".

This is my favorite of the Christ-narratives. He is there at once wise and compassionate. But alas, it is not authentic. It is not in the earliest of the New Testament manuscripts and thus was very likely inserted into John's gospel by a later scribe.

How does this amount to an objection to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy? In this way. How does the inerrantist explain the inerrancy of Scripture? How does she believe it came to be wholly without error? Inerrantists answer in a single voice. It is inerrant because it is Spirit-breathed. It was, when first composed, so guided by the Spirit in its composition that it contains no error. But note that this alone is not sufficient to explain the inerrancy of the Bible we now possess. We do not have the original Bible manuscripts. Rather we have but copies of (copies of copies . . .) of the originals. (Moreover, we have not the total set of texts that some thought deserved a place in the canonical set. Rather the texts of the Bible we now possess were selected from a much larger set of texts. But let us put that issue to the side.) But as the example of the Pericope Adulterae makes clear, those who copied the Biblical texts were not wholly faithful to the texts before them. They made additions (and deletions and changes, too).

Now, my question for inerrantists is this: Why would the Spirit allow such copy errors? The Spirit wished to produce a Bible wholly inerrant. The Spirit guided the authors of Biblical texts so that their manuscripts would be inerrant. The Spirit of course could have so guided the scribes whose task it was to copy Biblical texts that their work would have introduced no error into their product. But the Spirit did not do this.
This is an inexplicable oversight on the part of the Spirit. Indeed, given how the inerrantist portrays the work of the Spirit, it seems quite un-Spirit-like. What might be said in response? Was the Spirit simply inconsistent in its actions? This is hardly consistent with divinity. Did the Spirit perhaps lack the ability to guide thescribess as they made their copies? The Spirit is God and so lacks the ability to do nothing. Might the Spirit have been ignorant of the errors of the scribes? Again we must say that the Spirit is God and thus lacks knowledge of nothing.

There is nothing for the inerrantist left to say.

The conclusion is obvious. We must assume that the Spirit is consistent in its actions, and it is moreover both perfectly knowledgeable and perfectly powerful. Thus since it did not act so as insure that the scribes who copied Biblical texts did not introduce any error, it did not act so as to insure that the authors of the Biblical texts made no errors when they wrote. The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy must be abandoned.

Sola Scriptura, Part I

Sola scriptura is a pillar of Protestant Christianity. It is exceeded in importance only by the doctrine of Sola fide.

What is Sola scriptura? It is that one need not look outside the Bible for direction in matters either moral or spiritual. It is the doctrine that if one is in search of direction in some matter either spiritual or moral, one will find all that one needs in the Bible. (Be careful. It's not the doctrine that all that one needs will be explicitly said in Scripture. It is rather that one will find that materials to assemble what one needs within Scripture. How difficult will be the assembly? Not overly difficult. It's supposed to be something that anyone with even a modicum of intelligence can do. For the Protestant, we need no priesthood to interpret the Bible for us. We are quite capable to do it on our own.)

Sola scriptura is demonstrably false. Its falsity can be proved in a number of ways. Here I build my argument upon a what I think is a uncontroversial view of our obligations to nonhuman animals.

The Bible has very little to say about our obligations to nonhuman animals and what it does say is often either quite difficult to interpret or is so succinct that it is of little use. (I direct you to Proverbs 12:10, Isaiah 11:6-9, Genesis 9:1-3, Genesis 1:20-31. I know of no other verses relevant in this regard.) From these verses we get nothing like a complete view of our obligations to nonhuman animals. We do not get even an idea about how to begin to build such a view.

Of course much is said in the Bible about what we owe to other human beings, and to God. But the Bible fails to say how much of this, if any, is also applicable to nonhuman animals. It does seem that the Bible condones the consumption of animal flesh (at least of certain types). (Let us stress 'seems'. Some take Isiah 11 to show us that consumption of animal flesh is not part of God's original purpose for the world. It is rather a sign of its corruption, of its degradation.) But it says nothing about the kind of life, or death, we owe to those we eat. On that question, we are on our own.

One might perhaps say (Immanuel Kant said it) that we have no real obligations to nonhuman animals. If this were so, the Bible's silence on the matter would in no way undermine Sola scriptura. But Kant was quite self-evidently wrong. He do have real duties to nonhuman animals. We cannot torture them for pleasure. We cannot treat them as mere things and harm them unnecessarily as we would destroy a mere thing. We must pay heed to their needs, even when those exceed the need for the basics of survival. Some animals needs space to roam and the autonomy to roam it as they will. Some animals are intensely social and thus evince a need for the presence of others of their kind.

I do not intend here to even so much as sketch a complete theory of our obligations to nonhuman animals. Rather all that I wish to say is that we many such obligations.

The argument is complete. To sum: The Bible provides little to no guidance when the issue arises of our obligations to nonhuman animals. But we do have many such obligations. Thus Sola scriptura is false.

(I expect that most if not all Prostestants will at this point reply that if we cannot look to the Bible for the final word on all matters moral and spiritual, we will have no guidance on these matters at all and will thus lapse into a relativism of personal preference. I don't agree. I think that the only reason we can have to think the Bible God-breathed is that it concords with our own deepest moral intuitions. Moral intuition comes first. Belief in the Biblical truth is derivative and comes after. Expect a post on this in the future.)

Prophecy and Biblical Authority

For reasons inscrutable to my wife, I often listen to local Evangelical radio. On purely moral matters, I sometimes hear something wise, something of use. But when talk turns to the authority of Scripture, the relation of science to religion, such basic theological issues as the purpose of Christ's passion and death, I almost never find anything to uplift or enlighten.

Yesterday I caught a bit of an argument for the authority of Scripture. It concerned prophecy.

Let me make clear that the argument was aimed at ones such as me, ones who either doubt or reject the truth of Scripture. It is an argument meant to persuade the doubters and the rejecters. Thus it cannot assume the truth of any part of Scripture. Rather that it what is was intended to prove.

The argument's author (an evangelical minister - forgive me but I can't now recall his name) says that fulfillment of prophecy is the best evidence of Scripture's truth. Indeed prophecy's fulfillment he called the very 'signature' of God. (Other forms of evidence of Biblical truth were relegated to a lesser status. They were called 'fingerprints of God'.)

What are the prophesies of which he speaks? We need not say specifically. Rather all we need say is that they are prophesies recounted in the Bible itself. Moreover, their fulfillment is too recounted in the Bible. Do we have any other source for these prophecies? No. All are recounted only in the Bible. Do we have any other account of their fulfillment? Again no. All are recounted only in the Bible.

What then will our evangelical say if we ask him why we should believe these Biblical accounts? He cannot merely assume that we believe them, for he undertake to prove that the Bible is true. But assume this he did. He had nothing to say in response to this question.

This is a quite egregious error. In his attempt to prove the veracity of Scripture, he assumed that very thing. He assumed the veracity of the Scriptural accounts of prophesy and its fulfillment to prove the veracity of Scripture.

Logicians have a name for a fallacy of this sort. It is called 'circularity'. Circular arguments, needless to say, prove nothing at all, for the very thing that they hope to prove they assume in the course of that proof.

We have an irony here as well. Our evangelical no doubt believes - indeed he said in his discourse - that Christianity is paradigm rationality. But at the very start of his defense of it, he quite obviously commits one of the most basic of logical errors. Of course this does not imply that Christianity itself is irrational. But it does cast grave doubt upon the rationality of our evangelical, at least in theological matters. (He might act perfectly rationally when no engaged in theological discourse. I of course have no idea.) He claim to a more perfect rationality is pure pretense, pure bluff.

Procreate!

I have come to suspect that the so-called "Cultural Conservatives", in their war upon reproductive autonomy, will not rest content with the overturn of Roe and the subsequent radical restriction of abortion rights. They'll go after birth control next. Of course the Catholic Church remained a staunch enemy of birth control even when Protestants dropped their objections to it. But the tide on birth control has begun to turn. Conservative Protestants have begun to speak out against it.

Here are the words of a conservative Protestant of some influence:

"This epidemic of chosen childlessness will not be corrected by secular rethinking. In an effort to separate the pleasure of sex from the power of procreation, modern Americans think that sex totally free from constraint or conception is their right.

Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come.

The church should insist that the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God's glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that."

So says Albery Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His argument of course savors of Catholicism in a certain respect, but is anti-Catholic in another. It says that copulation should not be uncoupled from procreation. Thus Mohler seems to call upon us to eschew the use of birth control. But he calls upon us to do not only that. We must marry, he says. A life outside of marriage, even if celibate, is outside God's plan. This is an attack upon the priesthood, and indeed upon all within the Church who feel a call to remain celibate.

Let us be clear. For Mohler, we must marry and we must procreate. Indeed it seems that if we follow Mohler's advice families will be large. We cannot use birth control, for when we do we attempt to "separate the pleasure of sex from the power of procreation". (Mohler does not explicitly say that we cannot use birth control. But what he says entails it, and he should take responsibility not only for what he says but also for what is entailed thereby.) But I suspect that Mohler would claim that a wife should not withhold sex from her husband nor a husband sex from his wife. For is not marriage in part for sex? It is, in God's plan (or so I expect Mohler would say), the only proper place for sex, and sex between husband and wife is a natural and inevitable outgrowth of that love. Thus if both parents are fertile, the wife will bear many children.

The battle lines are drawn. I know on which side I stand.

Mohler's mistakes are many in number and kind.

1. I quick read of 1 Corinthians 7 seems to give council contrary to what Mohler says. Paul there praises those who choose to remain unmarried and instead devote their time to God. It is as if Mohler would have us forget what Paul there says.

2. There are many ways to bring good into the world, and procreation is but one of them. Who can say for sure that the way for me to bring the most good into the world is for me to marry and have children? Might I not do better to choose another path? (Paul seems quite clearly to answer Yes in 1 Corinthians 7.)

3. It is good to bring children into the world so that there might be more who can know and love God. Procreation is thus not an end in itself. It serves the end of increase in knowledge and love of God. But since it is not an end in itself, it's quite possible that some should be called to serve the end which it promotes in another way. For example, perhaps it would be better for an artist of world-historical ability to devote herself to her work to the exclusion of all else. It might be that only thus can she produce a body of work able to uplift the spirit in illumine the intellect. Let me put the point in this way. The mind is not for the body and the body's creation of new members of its species. Rather the body is for the mind, and we procreate so that there will be more minds. So what we serve is not the body and the body's function but the mind and its function, and clearly there might be better ways to serve the mind and its function than to procreate. We are not merely animal. We are rational too. Let us not debase ourselves so that we behave as do non-rational animals. Rather let us serve our rationality. Let us make certain that it flourishes in whatever way seems best to us. To do this, some will make more like themselves. Others will devote themselves solely to meditation, to research, to art, to governance and so on. In the end, they serve the same end as do those who procreate but they do so in another way.

4. A woman who must copulate often with her husband and who can never use birth control is a woman who will bear many children. She will undergo many total years of pregnancy and many years with very young children in the house. Such a woman will have no time to pursue other interests. She will be bound to home and to children for decades. Whatever talent she might have had for work outside the home will be squandered. This cannot be good.

5. A time will come when not all couples can have many children. Perhaps the planet can easily support 10 billion, or 50. I do not know. But at a certain point, its ability to support us will fail. Before that time, we must begin to curtail population growth. We must begin to use birth control. Indeed I would suppose that it's better to use birth control now so that we never come near the point at which the Earth's ability to support us fails.

Why I Am Not an Evangelical, Part I

American culture has proved fertile soil for a form of conservative Christianity that calls itself 'Evangelicalism'. As my readers (you brave few) know well, I am no Christian (though I find myself strongly attracted to Christianity). Perhaps I will become Christian some day. I find peace and enlightenment at Catholic mass. Among the priests I know are men of great wisdom and spiritual depth. Perhaps a day will come when they will convince me of what they preach. But I cannot imagine that I will ever become an Evangelical. Its errors are multifarious and manifest. I do hope that its influence wanes in the decades to come, for it is both culturally and religiously corrosive.

In this post and ones to follow, I explain why I take such a critical view of Evangelicalism. This is the first of seven posts. In each, I explain why I reject some central doctrine or stance of contemporary Evangelical Christianity.

Let's first have a list of them. After I'll turn to the first deadly sin.

1. The Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement
2. The Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy
3. The Doctrine of Sola Fide (Salvation by Faith Alone)
4. The Viciousness of the Evangelical God
5. Evangelical Disdain for Science
6. Evangelical Alliance with the Republican Party
7. Sexism of Evangelicals (Extraordinarily, both men and women evangelicals!)

Before I begin, let me say that not all Evangelicals are guilty of each of these sins. Do not suppose that "Evangelicalism" has a precise definition captured by some or all of the sins on my list. Rather each sin is characteristic of Evangelicalism. Exceptions can be found, but they are just that - exceptions (quite rare exceptions, I am sure).

Let us turn, then, to the first of the deadly sins.

First Fault: The Doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement

First let's have a statement of the doctrine (hereafter SA). After I'll attack it.

The doctrine concerns the death of Christ. It is an answer to the question, What was the point of His death? The answer that SA gives is multipart. (i) We are all sinners. (ii) We ourselves cannot remove the taint of that sin. We ourselves cannot atone for it. (iii) Christ, since perfect, could pay the price of our sins. He, since perfect, could atone for them by His death. Indeed in His death He did precisely this. (iv) Thus in His death Christ justifies us before God. In His death, he makes possible the forgiveness of our sins and a life eternal in God's bosom.

Thus we come to understand why 'Substitutionary Attonement' is the proper name of this doctrine. Christ, in His death, substitutes for us and bears the penalty of our sins; and in this way is atonement made for our sins.

(Of course most Evangelicals will add that our sins are forgiven only if we put our trust in Christ and ask His forgiveness. But strictly that is not part of SA, so let's say no more about it here. But I will take up the issue when I turn to the topic of The Viciousness of the Evangelical God.)

The Attack

1. No atonement is necessary for forgiveness. I can forgive you the wrongs you've done to me even if you do nothing to atone for those wrongs, even if you do not ask forgiveness. This makes Christ's death unnecessary for the forgiveness that God gives. If the only point that Christ's death can have is that it made possible forgiveness of sins, His death was pointless.

2. But my opponent might dig in her heels. She might say some such thing as this:

God's justice cannot be trumped by His mercy. Rather His justice requires that a price be paid for human sin.

My reply is two-part. (i) To suppose that a price must be paid for sin is to make God a hostage to His justice. Is to make Him unable to forgive if the price of sin is not paid. But any such limitation is inimical to God's nature. God can do as He pleases (so long as what He does involves no absolute impossibility - not even God can square the circle). But to forgive when the price of sin has not been paid is surely possible. Thus God can do it. (ii) God is a merciful god. But if of necessity the price of sin must be paid to God before He can forgive, He never extends His grace to us. To extend grace is to forgive, is to treat as righteous, when the price has not been payed. Thus the supposition that God is a god of mercy contradicts SA.

3. As said, no atonement is necessary for forgiveness. But that of course does not imply that atonement is not sufficient for forgiveness. So let us then suppose that it is sufficient.

But now let us ask whether another can atone for my sins. The answer is clear. My sins are mine alone. Only I can atone for them. You can of course help to alleviate the harm that I did when I sinned. But you do not thereby atone for my sin.

Let's make the point in another way. Defenders of SA often say that Christ bore the burden of our sins and by his death pays the penalty for them. But now we must ask a question like the one asked before. Can another pay the penalty of my sins? The answer is clear. Let us say that I've killed a man in a jealous rage. I am tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Now, what would we say if someone were to offer to do my time? Might the price of my sin by thereby paid? Of course not. If I were let go free, that would be one injustice. If another innocent man were imprisoned in my place, that would be a second injustice. My sin, my crime demands that I and I alone suffer the penalty of its commission. If we suppose that Christ, when nailed to the cross, did so to pay the price of our sins, we suppose a double injustice. The first is that we, the guilty ones, did not suffer as we ought. The second is that an innocent suffered for a crime He did not commit.

But SA, we know, supposes that substitutionary atonement is possible; it supposes that another can suffer and thereby atone for sins that I've committed. Thus we must conclude that the Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement is at bottom conceptually incoherent. It betrays a deep error about the nature of sin and its atonement. Whatever account we give of the point of Christ's death, it cannot be that of SA.

The Mystery of the Incarnation: Fully God, Fully Human

I wish to take a moment to draw a certain conclusion out of one of the central dogmas of Christianity. The dogma is that Christ was both fully human and fully divine.

From this we can draw the conclusion that Christ's humanity is such that it can be united in a single person with divinity. Let me be clear. I mean to draw a conclusion not about this or that human being but rather about Christ's humanity itself. I do not say merely that a certain human, viz. Christ, was divine. Rather I say that Christ's humanity was united to divinity and thus that Christ's humanity is such that it can be united in a single person with divinity.

But of course qua human, Christ and I differ in no way. His humanity was no different than mine. He became as us; He became human. Thus humanity in me is such that it can be united with divinity. But of course this is to say that I can become a god. Thus we are led quickly and easily from a central Christian dogma to an extraordinary claim not often remarked upon with Western Christianity. (Orthodox Christianity seems to admit the truth of what I say.) Indeed to many in the West it will seem like heresy.

Let me put the point in this way. The body of Jesus the Christ was human, as is mine and yours. Thus there is nothing in the humanity of this or that body that prevents its union with the Logos. Thus any of us humans might have been the Christ. Since the Logos became as we, any of us might have been the Christ.

Indeed I suspect that if we assume the doctrine of the Incarnation, some (or perhaps even all, if as I believe in the end all are saved) of us will become as Christ was. For our salvation entails that will take on that perfection which is appropriate to beings of our kind. But the very existence of Jesus the Christ proves that that perfection is the same as His perfection. Thus at the end of history, there will be a world with God above and the many Christs below. It is an extraordinary thought.

Each time that I run through the argument in my mind, I find it absolutely unassailable. It is compressed, but it is worth study. Indeed I would say that if it seems obviously mistaken to you, you have not yet understood it.

Questions for Christians, Part III

In the past, I have quite consciously resolved in The Philosophical Midwife not to take up issues that are narrowly political. I have no plan to change that, but before I pass over to the topic of this post, I think it helpful to make reference to recent events in Iraq. Iraqi Shias, in retaliation for Sunni crimes committed against them, have begun to hunt, capture, torture and kill Sunnis in Baghdad and elsewhere. Details of such events can be found here. Here's a bit from the start:

Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up. Mohannad al-Azawi, 27, a Sunni, was dragged from his pet shop on March 12. His mutilated body was found the next day. In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off. Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?" Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

Imagine what this young man must have suffered in his last days. The holes were surely drilled into him before he was killed, for the intent was to make him suffer. But of course he would not have sat still for such a thing. He must have been strapped down. He must have seen the drill near his head. He must have felt it begin to bite into his skull. His screams would have filled the room. His tears would have streamed down his face, and mixed with the blood that coursed down. He likely had no idea, as most of us have no idea, that life could become so terrible.

Other Sunnis have had their fingers and toes sawed off before their execution. I do not say amputated. I say sawed off. Each hand and foot must have been strapped hard to the edge of a table. Each man must in terror have seen the saw brought near. Each must have felt the first bite of the blade. A finger or toe would fall off and yet the terror would continue. They would scream until they could scream no more.

Each man forced to endure such a thing no doubt called out to God as he was tortured. But God did not come. God forsake them all. When I read of such events, I find it impossible to believe that God exists. Surely a perfectly good, all-powerful God would have intervened and saved Mr. Azawi from his travail!

I do not mean to insinuate that all Sunnis are innocent. Some have perpetrated crimes equal to the worst done by the Shias. Moreover, instances of such things are found throughout human history. Doubtless millions have undergone deaths as bad as Mr. Azawi's.

(Before I consider how the Christian might respond, let me take a moment to dismiss a certain common Christian view of the afterlife. It is that all those who do not accept Christ as Messiah will, after death, spend an eternity in torment. If this is true, Mr. Azawi passed from a few days of torment at the hands of men to an eternity of torment at the hands of God. If this is true, he passed from merely human torturers to the Divine Torturer. (How much more perfect and thus how much more painful would be torture meted out by God!) If this is true, he passed from the hands of human beings whose thirst for blood can perhaps be quenched with time to the One whose blood-thirst burns eternally. This of course is absurd. Good men do not torture others. How then can a God who surpasses all in goodness Himself torture His creatures? Was Mr. Azawi an evil man? Likely not, at least no more evil than many who pass for good. Did he deserve torture at the hands of men? Of course not. How much less, then, does he deserve torture at the hands of God! The belief that Mr. Azawi now suffers in hell is moral perversion. Moreover, it is blasphemy. One should never attribute such wickedness to God. What of those who say that Scripture tells us that all who die outside Christ suffer eternally and that as a consequence we must believe that this is so? I say this to them: Either Scripture, properly interpreted, says no such thing, or, if it does, it is in this regard surely false. Shame on you if you accept as true a text which asserts such absurdities!)

How might the Christian respond to my charge that a omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, if He existed, would not have forsaken Mr. Azawi? I know of three types of response.

The Value of Free Will

Most Christians (indeed I would suspect very nearly all) hold that the exercise of free will (i) exceeds in value the evil that men do and that (ii) no world of great value is devoid of free beings. (To simply asssert i is not enough for the Christian. The Christian God, since all-good, does not merely create a world that is on balance good. Rather He creates a world that is exceeded by no other in value.) On this response, though what was suffered by Mr. Azawi was a great evil, it and all other evils are more than balanced by a certain good, viz. free will, whose existence entails the very real possibility of such evils.

Let us grant that free will is a very great good, indeed a good so great that it far exceeds the evil that men do. Moreover let us grant that the best of all worlds must contain free beings. But now let us ask this: might God have intervened in Mr. Azawi's torture and still left his torturers, and the rest of us, free? The answer is an obvious Yes. God might have had Mr. Azawi come down with a mild cold that would have kept him from work for a few days and thus saved his life. If God had done this, would anyone be any less free? I would not. You would not. Mr. Azawi would not. (No one is any less free simply because they stay home with a cold.) Mr. Azawi's torturers would not. They would simply have had one less target, and that does not render them one iota less free.

I conclude that nothing about the importance of free will could have justified God's decision to forsake Mr. Azawi.

The Christian might respond that if God were to intervene in Mr. Azawi's travail, He would have to likewise intervene in the lives of all who suffer greatly. God, since perfect, is nothing if not consistent in His actions. But this, the Christian might say, would entail that the exercise of free will is a kind of sham. We would be shielded from its misuse and thus, in a sense, it would not be we who by our free acts make our world as it is. Rather it would be God who by his continual oversight and continual correction insures that the world goes as He wishes.

My response is two-part. (i) The Christian holds that God does intervene in the world at times. He does at times help those who need help. The Bible tells of many such events. But He does not always do so. Thus He seems inconsistent in His actions. Might it be that he intervenes when those in danger deserve help? This is indefensible. Some who are in danger of death, some who near a time of great pain, are but children. Do they not deserve help? What could they have possibly done to justify God's decision to forsake them? (ii) I simply do not see why God's intervention in times of the most terrible pain would render the exercise of free will a sham. Such times are relatively rare and thus even if God were to intervene in them, the exercise of our freedom would be mostly untouched by Him. Moreover, might He not intervene in a way undetectable by us? Might His touch not be very light, so light that it would seem that He had not touched the world at all?

Greater Future Goods

Might God's failure to end Mr. Azawi's travail be justified by some greater good that would (i) thus be brought about, and (ii) could not have been brought about in any other way? (It is not sufficient to merely describe some good or goods that Mr. Azawi's torture brought about, for if these goods could have been brought about in a way that involved any less evil, God's decision to forsake Mr. Azawi could not possibly be justified. God, since omnibenevolent, brings about the goods that He does in a way that involves the least evil.) If this were so, i.e. if there we some great good thereby brought about that could not have been brought about in any other way, we must ask for whom this good would be achieved. There are two possible responses. ('God' is not one of them. There is no good that God lacks, no good that God needs to reach complete goodness. God's goodness is sufficient unto itself.) (i) The goods would accrue to Mr. Azawi. Mr. Azawi died soon after his torture, and thus if some good accrued to him, it must have done so after his death. But what can this good be? What might Mr. Azawi's torture have gained him in the next life that he could not possibly have otherwise had? (a) Moral virtue? I simply do not believe that moral virtue can be achieved only after a time of great pain. Neither, I think, do you. We wish to instill moral virtue in our children. Must we then torture them to achieve this? Of course not. (b) Strength of character? (This seems related to a. Moral virtue requires strength of character. But they are not identical. One can be strong in vice.) If this were so, strength of character could be achieved in no way but through a travail of the sort Mr. Azawi underwent. But many who have not undergone such a thing are yet strong in character. My mother is an example, as was my grandmother. (c) Sympathy for the pain of others? I do not see why Mr. Azawi must suffer to gain that; and even if I am wrong, I do not see why he must have suffered so much to gain this capacity for sympathy. Might he not have suffered less and yet achieved the same sympathy? Surely. (d) Communion with God? Could God not have granted such a thing to Mr. Azawi even if He had never been tortured? God can let those that He wishes into His presence. To claim that one must be tortured to be given this grace seems at once both bizarre and repugnant.

But if his torture could not have gained Mr. Azawi moral virtue, strength of character, sympathy with others or communion with God, I am at a loss to say how it might have been good for him.

If the Christian demurs here, we might make a change of example. Some young children, indeed some neonates, have been tortured to death. Did this make possible some advance in moral virtue for them? No, it did not. Neonates, no matter what happens to them, are not ready to begin to develop virtue. Did they thereby grow in strength of character? Of course not. Ones so young as yet cannot begin to develop strength of character. Did they gain a power of sympathy? Of course not. Such a thing lies beyond the ability of one so young. Was their torture the only way to make possible communion with God? What a wicked God that would be! "Child, depart from my presence, and do not return until by the hands of men your body is ruined!" Can we suppose that God would say such a thing?

(ii) The good would accrue not to Mr. Azawi but to others. So, then, we can be used in just any way at all so as to achieve some good for others. We can be mere things, things to be used in the most terrible of ways so that others might benefit.

This is moral absurdity. For if we are mere things to be used however our Creator likes, so too are all others. But if all others are mere things too, why would God choose to harm us so as to benefit them? It makes no sense.

But if you yet think it possible that God would so use Mr. Azawi, do you think that He might so use an innocent child? Many children have undergone deaths as terrible as his. Did God use their death to benefit others? Would you let your child die in horrible pain so that some other might benefit? What a horrible parent you would be if you did!

Mr. Azawi Deserved It

This should come as no surprise to those with any knowledge of the Christian world-view. For the Christian, we are all and one sinners and thus we all and one fall short of the perfection of God. Some Christians hold that, as a consequence, we are all justly condemned to death and to torment. Only God's mercy, they say, a mercy by us completely unmerited, are we saved from such a fate.

I do not know how to respond other than to say that such a view as this is morally repugnant. Every human being has a certain dignity that cannot be abrogated by either god or man. (For me, part of the allure of the Church of Rome is its staunch defense of this view.) Torture abrogates this dignity.


So then, my charge that a truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would not have forsaken Mr. Azawi stands. But forsaken Mr. Azawi surely was. Thus there is no omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

Of course the issues (issues collected under the head of 'The Problem of Evil') that I've raised are large. Much has been written about them and I've not done justice that body of work. One could plunge into it and spend one's whole life there. I do plan to return to these issues. But I have said why the case of Mr. Azawi presents what seems to me an impenetrable barrier to my conversion to Christianity.

Things I Know But Cannot Prove

I will argue in what follows that much of what we know we cannot prove to ourselves.

The argument of this post is of great significance to the issue of the rationality of religious belief. When the argument is complete, I will turn to that issue.

I will begin with a set of definitions. The last will be a definition of 'proof'. (No doubt these definitions are a bit rough, but they will do.)

1. An argument is an ordered set of propositions. One is the conclusion. The rest are the premises. The premises are offered in support of the conclusion. (They need not actually give it any support. We do no wish to define 'argument' in such a way that all arguments are good arguments. Some arguments are evidently quite bad and do not lend any support to their conclusions.)

2. Arguments must have at least these two virtues if they are any good at all. (a) They must have all true premises. (b) The premises must be such that, if true, they do lend support to the conclusion.

These two properties of good arguments are independent of one another. An argument can have all true premises and yet not support its conclusion at all. Here's an example:

3 is odd.
My son is 3.
Thus my son is odd.

Both premises are true, but the conclusion (no matter how we understand the word 'odd' within it) quite obviously does not follow from them.

Moreover, an argument some (or all) of whose premises are false can be such that, had the premises been true, they would have lent support to the conclusion. Example:

5 is even and greater than 2.
No prime greater than two is even.
Thus 5 is not prime.

Clearly if the premises had been true, that truth would have been 'transmitted' to the conclusion. But of course one of the premises is false and thus the argument is no good.

Call an argument valid just if it is such that had its premises been true, they would shown the conclusion true, or at least likely true.

Call an argument sound just if it is valid and has all true premises.

3. Not all sound arguments prove that their conclusions are true. By definition the conclusions of sound arguments do follow from true premises, but this does not imply that they have been proven. Example:

2 is prime.
Thus 2 is prime.

The one premise is true, and the relation of conclusion to premise is such that the premise cannot be true and yet the conclusion false. Thus the argument is both valid and sound. But it does not prove that its conclusion is true. Rather it assumes the truth of its conclusion within the premises and thus cannot possible prove its conclusion. No proposition can be both assumed true and yet, at the same time, proven true. Merely assumed and proven are inconsistent.

We might attempt a definition of 'proof' based upon this insight. Call an argument 'circular' just if its conclusion is assumed true within the premises. What then do we say of this attempt at a definition of 'proof'?

A proof is a sound, non-circular argument.

Unfortunately this definition will not do. Some sound, non-circular arguments do not prove their conclusions. Example:

The only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907.
Either it is not the case that the only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907 or 2 is prime.
Thus 2 is prime.

A quick google of 'prime list' will verify the first premise. The first of the parts of the second premise ('it is not the case that the only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907') is false. But the second part ('2 is prime') is true. 2 is the first prime. Thus the whole of the second premise is true, for any propisiton of the form:

Either p or q.

is true if one of its constituent propositions is true.

Moreover, the conclusion of the argument does follow from the premises. The form of the argument is this:

p
Either not-p or q.
Thus q.

If the premises of an argument of this form are true, the conclusion must be true as well.

So then our argument is valid and has all true premises. This of course means that it is sound. Moreover, it is not circular. The conclusion is assumed nowhere in the premises. (It is part of the 'Either-or' we find in the second premise, but that it is does not imply that it is assumed. Rather what is assumed is the whole of the 'Either or ', and that could be true even if the second of its parts was false.) But is our argument a proof of its conclusion? It cannot be. Before we considered this argument, we were more certain of the truth of its conclusion than we were of the truth of either of its premises.

4. This will lead us to the proper definition of 'proof'. A proof begins with what is more certain and leads us to that which is less certain. Of course if the argument is successful, we will thereby become more certain of the conclusion than we were before. (How much more? That will depend upon the strength of the argument. We cannot become more certain of the conclusion that we were of the least certain premise. Moreover, not all arguments give the same degree of support to their conclusions. The degree of certitude of the conclusion will depend both upon the degree of certitude of the premises and upon the degree to which the premises lend support to the conclusion.) But before we examine the argument, its conclusion must be less certain to us than its premises if it is to constitute a proof of its conclusion.

So, then, let us say this:

A proof is a sound argument the conclusion of which was less certain to us than any of its premises before we began our examination of it.

Let me make a few comments about this definition. (i) It entails that proofs are not circular, for in a circular argument the conclusion is just as certain as the premises, for in a circular argument the conclusion is assumed within the premises. So then we do not need to add to our definition the condition that proofs must be non-circular. (ii) The definition quite explicitly relativizes the notion of proof to the degree of certitude that a certain person has of its premises and its conclusion. Thus what constitutes a proof for me will not in all cases constitute a proof for you. This on reflection should be obvious. An innocent man needs no proof of his innocence. But if his wife and children were brutally murdered and the police have as yet no reason to rule the husband out as a supsect, the police do need proof of his innocence. If the police find that proof, it will be a proof for them but not for the husband. He knew all along that he did not kill his family and cannot in any sense have it proven to him that he did not. In what follows, I will not simply speak of proofs but of proofs for this or that person. (iii) The definition just as explicity relativizes the notion of proof to a certain time, viz. the time at which the argument is considered. This leaves open the possibility that what was for a me a proof at one time will not be a proof at a later time. (iv) Might we need to add some other condition to the argument? Perhaps we do. But even if so, we have identified a property that must be had by all proofs. This property is all that I need for the argument to follow.

5. I know that I love my wife and children. I know that I now sit in my study and write about the nature of knowledge. I know that I like red wines much better than whites.

But I cannot prove any of these things to myself. I can, of course, produce sound non-circular arguments for each of these. But any such argument will contain at least one premise that is antecedently no more certain for me than the conclusion, for I am as sure of these things as I am sure of anything.

Perhaps I ought to attempt a proof of the first to drive home my point. So, then, how might I prove to myself that I am a father of three children? Here's one way:

I recall the birth of each of my three children.
None have died.
Thus I am a father of three.

The argument is sound and non-circular. But it doesn't really prove anything to me, for I was just as certain of its conclusion as I was of its premises before I constructed the argument. The argument did not proceed from the more certain and upon that as basis proceed to the less certain. Rather, the three propositions within the argument were equally certain to me before I constructed the argument. The argument fails as a proof.

Moreover, no amount of ingenuity will produce an argument that for me constitutes a proof of the proposition that I am a father of three. For I am as certain that I am a father of three as I am of anything. Thus no set of propositions could possible prove to me that I am a father of three (though of course many sets of true propositions non-circularly entail that I am a father of three).

6. Quite obviously, then, much of what we know we cannot possibly prove to ourselves - my three examples could be added to quite easily. The reason for this is simple: many of us believe a large set of propositions that for us are at least as certain as anything else we believe.

Might someoneone object here that if I cannot prove, for example, that I have three children, I do not really know it? No doubt some will. My response is two-part. (i) Surely reflection on the nature of knowledge and of proof should never lead us to doubt those simple truths that we believed before reflection began. I do know that I have three children, and no amount of philosophizing can ever cast even an iota of doubt on it. But can I prove that I have three children? I can produce nothing like a proof of this belief. (I can produce sound, non-circular arguments ad infinitum for this belief. But none are proofs; none begin in the more certain and proceed to the less certain.) (ii) The objector seems to assent to the proposition that if a thing cannot be proven, it cannot be known. Let us then ask for the proof of this proposition. (The proposition is meant to apply universally and thus must apply to itself.) I for one know of no argument with any prima facie plausability that looks anything like a proof of this proposition. Indeed I think it likely that no such argument exists. Thus the proposition that knoweldge requires proof is, if true, false. But no proposition can be both true and false, and thus it is false. There can be knowledge without the possibility of proof.

7. What relevance has this to the issue of the extent of religious knowledge? Often the believer is asked by the skeptic to produce proofs of her beliefs, and if she is unable to do so the skeptic often assumes that the believer does not really know what she claims to know. Lack of proof is often assumed by the skeptic to undermine the rationality of belief. But as should be clear, mere lack of proof by itself does nothing to undermine the rationality of what we believe, for much of what we know we cannot prove.

For the skeptic to make her case, she must prove that religious belief is among the class of beliefs that do require proof if they are to be known. (Surely this class is not empty. Much of what we know we know only because we can prove it, or at least by argument show it quite likely. Much of science proceeds in this way.)

Let me here say that I for one know of no way to prove that no religious belief can be known if it is not proven. Indeed I suspect that some religious beliefs have a prima facie right to claim of themselves that they are in the class of known but unprovable propositions. If the skeptic believes otherwise, it is incumbent upon her to show otherwise. The ball is in the skeptic's court.

8. Of course there's much that remains to be said on the subject. (It seems to me that what remains is much more difficult than what has been said.) If we were to continue to philosophize, the first question that we must answer would of course be this: how do we distinguish a belief that requires proof from one that does not? Others would follow soon thereafter. It seems that those that do not need proof are know directly, or immediately. But what does this mean? Moreover, what are those cognitive faculties that directly, or immediately give rise to knowledge? I have little insight into how to answer these. But that in no way undermines the conclusion of this post: much of what we know we cannot prove.

Human Origins and Divine Providence

I wish to take a moment and discuss a common misconception in the debate about human origins. It concerns the concept of the random. As is so often said in this debate, both by the defenders of the Darwinian account of human origins ('D' for short) and by its detractors, the Darwinian account posits a certain kind of randomness in its account of the origin of species, both human and non-human. But what kind of randomness does it posit? (When we speak of the random, we sometimes mean one thing and sometimes mean another.) At times we say that a thing is random because it lacks a cause of any kind. Quantum mechanics, at least in its canonical interpretation - the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' - locates such randomness in the subatomic realm. For instance, on the Copenhagen interpretation when a radioactive nucleus decays, no cause was operative sufficient to make it decay then and not before or after. The fact that it decayed just when it did is, on the Copenhagen interpretation, random.

The kind of randomness posited by D is not of this sort. Rather it is the same in kind as, for example, the randomness of the path of a tornado. We say that the path of tornado is random not in the sense that it lacks a cause of any kind but rather in the sense that its path is non-purposive. What does this mean? It means this: the tornado's path is not a product of choice but rather comes about by the operation of 'blind' forces. One in the path of a tornado should not think that she has been singled out for retribution. Nor should she think that the tornado was sent her way by some malevolent agent. Rather the tornado's path, though perfectly predictable if one had but enough finely detailed information about it and the weather in its vicinity, was not the product of choice. On the contrary, its path and indeed its formation were the product of forces that operated with no knowledge of what they would bring about. These forces were in this sense 'blind' and 'non-purposive'.

The same point can be made another way. Even after a complete meteorological explanation of the formation and movement of the tornado is given, one might be tempted to ask why the tornado hit one's home and not some other. This is the question of what the damage caused by the tornado means. The answer is that it means nothing. It is meaningless.

Now, what place does this notion of the random, viz. the random as non-purposive, have in D? Many seem to hold that D assumes a kind of absolute non-purposive randomness. This is a mistake. D, insofar as it science and not metaphysics, assumes merely a relative non-purposive randomness. Let me explain. The mechanisms by which D explains genetic mutation do not act so as to bring about certain biological forms. Rather they in themselves act with no regard to what they will bring about. They are for this reason 'blind' and non-purposive. Take for example an instance of genetic mutation caused by the radioactive decay of a bit of natural uranium. The uranium does not make itself decay at the moment and in the manner that it does so that it might cause the mutation and so give rise to biological novelty. Rather the uranium decays in accordance with the law that governs such events, laws which act in perfect disregard of what they will or will not bring about.

So, then, the physical causes of mutation in themselves act blindly and non-purposively. But this does not imply that there exists no force outside the physical that chose to make a world in which such intrinsically non-purposive forces act so as to create biological novelty. This is our distinction between absolute non-purposive randomness and relative non-purposive randomness. Merely relative non-purposive randomness is the sort found in the causal mechanisms at work in the physical world. It is the non-purposive randomness intrinsic to the physical world. But this sort of non-purposive randomness is perfectly consistent with a creator God who chooses this world over all others precisely because the non-purposive randomness it exhibits will give rise to the kind of biological diversity we see about us.

To sum up: D assumes only a relative non-purposive randomness and thus is silent about the possibility of a creator God who acted so as to bring about a world of the sort in which we live. God can exist and exercise a perfect providence over all things and yet D be true.

The Darwinian theory of evolution and theism ('T' for short) are simply not of a type. They are, as it were, at different levels. The former concerns merely the physical world and implies nothing of interest about the latter. The latter concerns a world beyond the physical and is perfectly consistent with the claim that, if one restricts oneself to the operation of physical causes, one will find there no purposiveness in the generation of biological novelty.

Don't confuse what I've said with a view that goes by the name of 'Theistic Evolution'. I've not endorsed theism; nor have I rejected it. I have simply said that it is perfectly consistent with Darwinian evolutionary theory.

I'll end with a few words about a certain objection to this. Some say, if T and D are consistent and as a matter of fact both true, God must have directed the processes of evolution so that He might achieve His desired result. This overlooks a certain possible model of creation. On this model, God surveys the entire set of all possible worlds and among them chooses that which He thinks it best to make. When He makes that world, He knows all that will happen within it. But after He has made it, He lets the basic physical mechanisms within it work in accordance with the laws that govern them. In time, these mechanisms give rise to life. On this model, God does not meddle in the world so as to direct evolution at a goal He wishes to achieve. Rather the world will of itself achieve that goal, and for that reason it was chosen. God need not meddle to choose.

Don't confuse the view I've endorsed with a deistic conception of God. The God I have described need not be hands off. On the contrary, He might be quite active in the world. But His activity is not necessary to achieve those biological forms that He wished to exist.

Questions for Christians, Part II

I do not know how to read Scripture as Christians read it, for I do not know in what way I should treat it as authoritative. (Of course the Christian must treat Scripture as authoritative in some way. Christians differ among themselves about how to do this, but none deny that God in some way speaks through Scripture.)

I. The Way of the Fundamentalist

Might we say that Scripture is inerrant? To my mind, this is not a live option. I have given reasons of various sorts to reject the inerrantist view in prior posts, but let me here give a novel reason. Consider the proposition that expresses the inerrantist view. It is this:

BI: Scripture is through and through wholly without error.

Let us ask the inerrantist by what right does she assert BI. If she replies that Scripture itself asserts BI, her opponent has absolutely no obligation to agree. For to assume the veracity of Scripture to justify BI is just to assume veracity to justify veracity; and circular arguments of course prove nothing. So then the justification for BI must lie outside Scripture. But where if not Scripture can we find reason to hold BI? In history? History can at best verify bits and pieces of Scripture; it cannot verify the whole of it. In science? Much of Scripture is non-scientific in character; moreover, science contradict parts of Scripture. Genesis 1 provides the best-known example, but others can be found. Might we look to tradition to justify the inerrancy of Scripture? We cannot, for much of what tradition says about Scripture itself derives from Scripture, and so again we would have attempted to prove the veracity of Scripture based on the assumption of the veracity of Scripture. But if not in tradition, science, or history, there is nowhere that we can find reason to hold BI. BI is then unjustified and so, if held, held only irrationally.

Let me stress this point: BI must look outside Scripture for its justification. It is in this sense extra-Scriptural. This should trouble the inerrantists, for many hold that the sole source of true religious belief is the Bible.

In sum: in the attempt to find a way in which to read Scripture as if it is authoritative, we cannot side with the inerrantists.

I should say as well that I find BI not only unjustified but false as well. The Bible is full error, scientific, moral and other. The world was not created in six days. (Genesis 1) The world is not thousands of years old; it is billions. (The Biblical chronology culled from a multiplicity of verses.) One surely should not kill a child that curses his or her parents. (Leviticus 20:9) (To say otherwise is to allow that a thing most certainly evil today was not evil in the past, but such a temporal ethical relativism is surely repugnant.) Sinners most certainly are not banished to an eternity of torment as Christ says that they are. (Matthew 13: 47-50) (Torture has always been, is now and will always be evil.) Imagine my difficulty then when I attempt to read Scripture as does the Christian.

II. The Catholic Way

But how then might we read Scripture as authoritative? Might we hand it over to some church hierarchy and trust their opinion? This is the course recommended by the Church of Rome. If we do this, we the laity substitute the authority of Scripture for the authority of the Church. So let us ask what reason we have to believe that the Church speaks authoratatively. Here I can only report that I have deep disagreements with the Church about certain moral questions. Thus I have little or no inclination to say that the authority I seek lies in the Church.

III. The Way of Luther

Might we find the authority in Scripture if we allow ourselves to be lead by the Spirit as we read it. (I take Luther to have suggested such a thing, contra the Church of Rome.) I am doubtful that this suggestion can be of much help. Men and women of good faith, careful readers of Scripture all, deeply disagree about how to read it. (There's no need for me to chronicle such disagreements. Doubtless my readers can provide many examples of their own.) Is the Spirit present to some of these but not to all? If so, the Spirit shows an unjustified preference for some subset of Christians; it favors that subset with the grace to arrive at proper translations but withholds from others equally sincere and equally assiduous a similar grace. Such partiality is not worthy of God and should not be ascribed to Him.

Moreover, when I sit and read the Bible and attempt to open myself up to divine guidance (I'm not sure how to do this, but I have given it a try) I find that I'm often presented with texts that are either almost surely false or completely inscrutable. The Spirit has failed me.

But if none of these three ways, I do not know how to treat Scripture as an authoratative source. I do not know how to read Scripture as do Christians. This is a second barrier to my assent to the Christian world-view.

Questions for Christians, Part I

Over the past decade, I flirted with Christianity. I had some wish to become Christian and sought a reason, or a way, to become Christian. I spoke to Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. I attended Mass. I read.

I failed. I found that I could not become Christian. Indeed when I look back on my flirtation, I now think that I never really wanted it.

I did not decide that I could not become Christian. Rather I simply found that I could not, much as I find that I cannot believe that my head is made of glass, or that I am now asleep and in a dream. Belief for me now seems impossible.

The occasion of this was Roman Polanski's The Pianist. It tells the story of a young Polish Jew who endures the years of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. As I watched, I thought this to myself: "This young man was a Jew. God had made the Jews His people and had promised them His protection. Yet He did absolutely nothing to spare his people the hell of Nazi persecution. Moreover, nothing the Polish Jews had done could have merited what happened to them at the hands of the Nazis. Thus there can be no God, at least no God of the sort in which the Christians believe."

I do not mean that you should find this a persuasive argument. It has numerous gaps of course, and I plan to return to it in a later post. Rather all that I intend is to report what I thought. (The argument, of course, is a version of the so-called 'Problem of Evil.')

From the time that I saw The Pianist, Christianity was no longer a live option for me. In the posts that follow, I will explain why this is so. Each post will consist of a question or questions for which the Christian must have an answer, and although I have attempted to answer each for myself I have an answer to none. Thus at present I cannot be a Christian.

Before I ask my first question, let me say this. In some of what I will say I will presuppose the objectivity of moral principle. I have found that many Christians think this tantamount to the assumption that God exists, or that the dogmas of Christianity are true. I simply do not follow. Perhaps the objectivity of moral principle presupposes the existence of something greater-than-human, of something outside the world in which we live. But why it should presuppose the God of Christianity I do not know. The Christian God is triune. How do we derive that from the objectivity of moral principle? The Christian God became flesh in the form of Christ. How do we derive that from the objectivity of moral principle? Many such questions can be answered, and I have no idea how to begin an answer to any of them.

Here, then, is my first question:

As said, the Christian God is triune. Indeed this is a core dogma of Christianity.
The trinity of God does not imply that God is three gods. (Christianity is a variety of monotheism, not polytheism.) Nor does it imply that God is tri-partite. (This would ruin the unity of God; it would split him into three distinct things.) Rather in its orthodox formulation it means that God encompasses three persons with one God.
I have no idea what this means, and indeed I can think of no reason why I should even believe such an assertion coherent.
The upshot of this is that I cannot become a Christian until I have a good answer to the question, What do we mean when we say that God is triune.

Put another way, I cannot fix in my mind what idea 'the Trinity' is meant to convey. Thus I can associate no proposition with 'God is triune' and so simply cannot believe it. But then I cannot believe one of the core doctrines of Christianity and so am not Christian.

Perhaps others do understand what 'the Trinity' is meant to convey (though a study of the relevant literature on the question makes me doubt it). I do not say that they do not. Rather all that I say is that I do not understand it, and conclude that Christianity is not a possibility for me.

Let me end with discussion of a possibility that I at present but dimly understand. It is that true Christianity is marked not by assent to this or that set of propositions but rather by a form of life that has as it essential character moral rectitude. Of course many Christians will deny this; they say rather that Christianity is, in part at least, a matter of assent to certain propositions. But what if it is not? What if Christianity is rather a life lived a certain way? If so, I could yet be a Christian and yet have answers to none of my questions. If so, I could be a Christian and yet not know it. If so, I could be a Christian and deny that I am a Christian.

If one adopts this possibility, it makes little or no difference that one call oneself a Christian. Rather all that matters is that one live rightly.