Evangelical Realism

There’s an interesting discussion over at the NoGodBlog on the topic of “Nontheistic Churches.” Basically, the poster raises the question of whether or not atheists ought to build “churches” and hold weekly meetings, like the believers do. The goal would be to grant unbelievers the same social and legal benefits (e.g. tax exemptions) as theistic churches enjoy. Is this a compromise of atheistic principles, though?

The discussion in the comments is particularly interesting as different people weigh in with their perspectives.

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We’re up to Chapter 11 of TIA, which is going to go fairly quickly. If we limit ourselves to the essential substance of what Vox is saying in this chapter, we learn that

• Vox Day does not like Michel Onfray.
• Vox also does not like the French.
• He does like the Jews, and thinks that in general they are superior to virtually any other race or ethnic group, at least intellectually.
• He does not, however, like Michel Onfray.
• Hitler was an atheist no matter what he said about God, because he killed people and real theists don’t kill people.
• It’s not the Catholic’s fault that they didn’t do more to save the Jews, who after all were non-Catholics, and why should any Catholic care about the Holocaust?
• Vox is only too glad, however, to insinuate that guilt for various “atheist atrocities” ought to be associated with atheists in general and Michel Onfray in particular (whom Vox apparently doesn’t like).
• The Enlightenment was evil, and did only bad things, and is in some way Michel Onfray’s fault.
• Vox would like to blame the Enlightenment for sexual slavery, and thinks that Michel Onfray would enjoy forcing a woman to have sex with several men at the same time
• Michel Onfray wants to burn Western civilization to the ground and worship Satan.
• And oh yes, I almost forgot—Vox does not like Michel Onfray.

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This week I thought we might pay a visit to the Tektonics forum over at theologyweb.com, home of the monthly “Screwball Thread” wherein JP Holding and company defend The Faith by hurling animated smilies at people whose words displease them. If you’ve been following the September SCrewballs [sic] thread, you’ll know that Holding has recently started following the XFiles Friday posts here, and they’re apparently putting a bit of a burr under his saddle. This week’s installment has him so worked up that he breaks from his usual pattern of simply posting excerpts, and tries to fisk them (or at least the bits that he quotes). In doing so, he gives us a bit more insight into his own personal world, and his techniques for insulating himself from those aspects of the real world that might prove troublesome.

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Pope in Paris condemns love of money, power.

(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 9.)

In examining the documentary evidence for the text of the New Testament, Geisler and Turek have consistently blurred the distinction between having an accurate record of what Christians were saying early on, and the accuracy of the sayings themselves. Reacting to the suggestion that the New Testament is unreliable because the documents weren’t written until long after the events they describe, G&T seem to be assuming that if they can make the documents sound close enough to the A.D. 30’s, they will have proven that the documents are reliable. That’s a logical fallacy, however:

If my pet is not a mammal, then my pet is not a dog.

My pet is a mammal.

Therefore my pet is a dog. (Oops, my pet is a ferret!)

If the New Testament documents were not written before 100AD, then they are not reliable. Geisler and Turek are saying that the manuscripts were written before 100AD, and therefore they are (allegedly) reliable—the same logical fallacy as is illustrated above. In trying to answer the skeptics, however, they accidentally betray the fact that there is indeed good reason to doubt the reliability of the testimony within the documents. And not just because they portray God as behaving in ways that are markedly different from what we see in real life.

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Dr. Greg Boyd has a post up at Answering the Skeptic on the topic of how Christians should respond to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Boyd’s 6 point rebuttal says that, in essence, (a) not all scholars agree with Ehrman, (b) Ehrman’s tone is “alarmist,” (c) 95-98% of the New Testament is not in any serious doubt, (d) we have more manuscripts for the NT than for any other ancient document, and (e) Ehrman exaggerates. Boyd’s last point, however, is the one I find the most interesting.

Bart may (or may not) have substantiated his claim that sometimes intentional alterations were made in the text to make a passage sound more “orthodox.” Even if we grant this (and many textual critics would not), it doesn’t affect much.

First, if we throw out all the texts about which there is some question — including those that may have been intentionally altered — it wouldn’t affect our general estimation of the reliability of the New Testament documents and wouldn’t affect anything important to the faith.

Second — and this is very important — in the ancient world written texts were regarded as expressions of an oral tradition, and it was understood that it’s okay to slightly modify oral traditions to address new issues that have arisen in the community. So even if certain texts were altered slightly (and all the alleged alterations are in fact slight), it doesn’t mean there was anything sinister going on. This is what people expected to be done. [Emphasis mine.]

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Ok, I screwed up: I said that last week was the end of Vox Day’s chapter on Daniel Dennett. Somehow I missed one last section, and it’s a beaut. Check this out:

Dennett’s admirable call for science and religion to lay down their arms and proceed in a spirit of amiable curiosity is subject to one final logical flaw, from at least one religious perspective. Many religious worldviews postulate the existence of intelligent, supernatural beings whose actions affect the physical world, but the Christian view, in particular, puts forth the disturbing notion that our present world is not ruled by God, but by an evil supernatural being, one who long ago usurped humanity’s God-given sovereignty. This being, Satan, is not only self-aware, but has been intelligent enough to fool the mind of Man from the very start, beginning with the first temptation in the Garden of Eden.

Vox, like so many others, is actually re-writing Genesis with that last comment. Nowhere in the Bible is it ever stated or suggested that Eve was tempted or deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden. A mere talking snake was the villain in that story—Satan didn’t become a character in Bible stories until after the Jews had been exposed to Persian dualism. But he’s a useful character in many ways, and Vox intends to use him to manufacture one final flaw to charge to Dennett’s account.

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As charismatic Christians like to tell us, Jesus once said, “Nobody puts new wine in old wineskins,” meaning that old traditions can’t always accommodate new movements of God, or something to that effect. He never said anything about putting old wine into new wineskins, however, and I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for how Christians re-frame Scriptural teachings to accommodate new interpretations. JP Holding gives us a good example of this in his article on “Biblical” faith, which we started to look at last week. But before we get to Holding, let’s do a quick review.

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According to an Associated Press report, a 28-year-old man who killed 6 and wounded 4 on a shooting rampage testified that “I kill for God. I listen to God.” Now, obviously it would not be fair to blame Christianity for this man’s mental illness, nor can we fairly hold God responsible for his actions (any more than it would be Darwin’s fault if the man had said “I kill for Darwin”). This case does, however, point out an interesting question, which is how do we know he’s not telling the truth?

A popular Christian claim is that God is the source of all morality. In other words, things like shooting rampages are not wrong in and of themselves, they’re only wrong because God forbids them. Or, as Vox Day puts it, “God’s game, God’s rules.” There’s no power greater than God that can force some external moral standard on the Almighty, therefore God is free to define morality however He sees fit. Who is to say, then, that God cannot make a special set of rules, for this one deranged shooter, that commands him to go on a shooting spree and kill people? Sure, he’s insane, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not telling the truth about God. So how do we know?

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(Book: I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST, by Geisler and Turek, chapter 9.)

Geisler and Turek have been looking at the manuscript evidence for the New Testament, and they cite 1 Cor. 15 as proof that the resurrection story goes back as to within a few years, and possibly only 18 months, of the events it purports to describe. As we saw last time, however, 1 Cor. 15 might actually suggest that the Gospel evolved, from an early version in which Jesus rose spiritually, to the eventual orthodox story we have today. Geisler and Turek follow this conclusion with a promise to look into the skeptical objections to Gospel authenticity, but this problem is not one that they happen to address. And with their answers to the objections they do deal with, they only dig them in deeper.

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