Monthly Archives: January 2012

Word of the Day: Beg the Question

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Novel of Christianity and atheismTo beg the question does not mean “to invite the question.” Here’s a faulty use of the phrase: “Bill’s report shows too many returns on our Mark 20 widget, which begs the question, ‘How will we improve our manufacturing quality?’” Or, “The weeds in this lawn beg the question, ‘Why is it so hard to get a good gardener?’”
As a rule, if some variant of “beg the question” is used in a sentence with an embedded question, the phrase is used incorrectly.
Used properly, begging the question (petitio principia) is a logical fallacy that means to assume the conclusion in your premise.
For example: “(1) The Bible is the word of God; therefore (2) it’s correct.” This one leaves much unsaid:

  1. God exists [unstated assumption, and the reason for the fallacy]
  2. (1) the Bible comes from God [stated premise]
  3. therefore (2) the Bible is correct [stated conclusion]
  4. therefore the Bible is correct when it says, “God exists” [unstated conclusion].

Question begging often hides in convoluted prose. Wikipedia gives this example: “To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State, for it is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.” In other words: freedom of speech is essential because it is good. A simplifying restatement can often uncover this fallacy in both others’ arguments and our own.
Begging the question is similar to circular reasoning, but the difference is subtle. The flaw with begging the question is that it depends on an unstated premise. The flaw with circular logic is structural. It is an argument of the form “A, therefore A.” That is, the conclusion is a restatement of the premise.
An example of circular logic: “He is unattractive because he is so damn ugly.” “He is ugly” is just a restatement of “he is unattractive.” Or, “Dr. Smith’s Pink Pills are what you need because that’s the best treatment.”
“The Wheel of Power” illustrates an example of circular logic with more steps:

  1. “How can you be sure it’s the word of God?” Because the Bible tells us so.
  2. “But why believe the Bible?” The Bible is infallible.
  3. “But how do you know?” The Bible is the word of God. (And repeat …)

You should know what “beg the question” means so that you can understand it when used correctly, but I recommend against using it. If you use it correctly, many people won’t understand, and if you follow the crowd and use it to mean “invite the question,” you’ll annoy those who understand the correct usage.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
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What’s Wrong with the Pro-Life Position?

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Atheism and ChristianityOne commenter to this blog made the excellent point that the label “pro-life” for the anti-abortion movement is a bit odd.  In this contentious debate, I wanted to label those in each group as they prefer, but who’s not pro-life?
In the Christian view, life on earth is “the cramped and narrow foyer leading to the great hall of God’s eternity” (William Lane Craig).  What a dismal view of life—something simply to be endured as we wait for the real Life to begin.  By contrast, the atheist, certain of only the one life we all know exists, is the one who lives life to the fullest.  It can be argued that the atheist is the one who’s truly pro-life.
But let’s leave the conventional labels alone and consider the pro-life position.  If there were no downsides of carrying a fetus to term, if carrying the fetus to term were nothing more than a minor inconvenience for the mother, the abortion question wouldn’t be an interesting issue.  But of course there are downsides—big ones.  To bring a child into the world, poorly cared for in the womb, unwanted and unloved by its mother, abandoned by its father, neglected or abused, or growing up in squalor or in an abysmal home—for me, that potential harm eclipses the harm of denying a cell the chance to grow into a person.  Demanding that the state step in and declare that it knows the consequences better than the mother seems an odd position to take for typically conservative Christians.
The pro-life advocate has a quick answer: carry the child to term and give it up for adoption.  But this does nothing to address the problem of the woman unable to or uninterested in caring for herself and the baby properly during the pregnancy.  Or of the baby with identified birth defects.  Unhealthy babies are far more likely to live out their childhood in foster care.
“Just put it up for adoption” is hopeless naïve when only two percent of all births to unmarried women ended in an adoption.  For teen mothers, the rate is even less.  Let’s not pretend that if the mother’s life and home situation aren’t conducive to raising a baby until adulthood that she’ll always put the baby up for adoption.
Even if a teen mother chose to have her baby adopted, the consequences of the pregnancy are dramatic.  She’ll miss school, she’ll be ostracized, and she’ll go through an emotional meat grinder when it comes time to give up her baby.  And since the statistics say she won’t, that she will almost surely keep the baby, she’ll have no chance to get back on track for the life she had planned.
I have a mental image of an anti-abortion activist looking with satisfaction on the girl he just talked out of having an abortion, with no understanding of the shackles he may have placed on her life or the hellish environment to which he has may have consigned that child-to-be.  Infuriating.
The alternative to abortion rights is compulsory pregnancy.  My claims are simple: that (1) some lives are truly abysmal and (2) creating such a life (for the mother or the child) is a bad thing.  I doubt that my argument has convinced any pro-lifers to budge in their position, but I do demand that they acknowledge the terrible burden that making abortion illegal would place on a million women each year.
Next time: What Does the Bible Say About Abortion? Not Much.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
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“Cross Examined” Available on Kindle!

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My novel is now available on Kindle, with more electronic formats in process.
If you haven’t heard about the book, here’s the one-liner: a young man takes a reluctant journey into the defense of Christianity and realizes that the truth of religion is something you must decide for yourself.
The book targets two audiences.  First, I want to give thoughtful Christians something to think about and to encourage complacent Christians to critique the foundations of their religion.  Many Christian leaders make exactly this point, that they too want to push Christians to think.  I think of the book as an intellectual workout—a taxing project, perhaps, but one that leaves the reader a stronger person.
Second, I want to reach atheists who might enjoy approaching these intellectual arguments in fiction rather than in the usual nonfiction form.
The book is set in Los Angeles in 1906, in an odd new church that is suddenly world famous.  The pastor’s prediction of imminent disaster had been front-page news the day before the great San Francisco earthquake—true story.  Here’s the back-cover summary:

In 1906, three men share a destiny forged by a prophecy of destruction.  That prophecy comes true with staggering force with the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and young assistant pastor Paul Winston is cast into spiritual darkness when his fiancée is among the dead.  Soon Paul finds himself torn between two powerful mentors: the charismatic pastor who rescued him from the street and an eccentric atheist who gradually undercuts Christianity’s intellectual foundation.

As he grapples with the shock to love and faith, Paul’s past haunts him.  He struggles to retain his faith, the redemptive lifesaver that keeps him afloat in a sea of guilt.  But the belief that once saved him now threatens to destroy the man he is becoming.

Paul discovers that redemption comes in many forms.  A miracle of life.  A fall from grace.  A friend resurrected.  A secret discovered.  And maybe, a new path taken.  He realizes that religion is too important to let someone else decide it for him.  The choice in the end is his—will it be one he can live with?

Cross Examined challenges the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up … or discard them. Take the journey and see where it leads you.

Buy Cross Examined at Amazon today (270 pages, paperback, $11.95 or Kindle version, $2.99).
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  • Read excerpts of the book here.

Word of the Day: Shermer’s Law

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Christianity and atheism clash againI propose “Shermer’s Law” for this observation by Michael Shermer: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”1
This observation makes an important distinction between (1) how someone came to their beliefs and (2) how they later defend those beliefs.  People often come to their beliefs for poor reasons—for example, they may be racist or religious simply because they were raised in that environment.
Few will admit as an adult, “Oh, yeah—I don’t believe that for any better reason than that I was steeped in that environment, and I’m now just an unthinking reflection of that environment.”  Instead, they use their intellect (much more formidable now that they’re an adult) to marshal a defense of their beliefs.  The belief comes first, and the defense comes after.  And this isn’t just to save face with an antagonist; it’s to save face with themselves.
We can come up with a defense for just about anything.  It may not be a very good defense, but it’s something, and it may be sufficient to avoid cognitive dissonance (“Surely I believe this for a good reason, right??”).  The smarter you are, the better the defense you will come up with.
All of us do this, and (this may be consolation) the smartest people can do it more spectacularly than the rest of us.  Isaac Newton wasted time in alchemy, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling in vitamin C research, and Nobel laureate William Shockley in eugenics.
No one’s immune, but this is common in Christians who cobble together rationalizations for their beliefs.  “In for a penny, in for a pound” is easier than taking a step back to soberly consider the logic of the beliefs.  And the smarter the Christian, the better they can defend groundless beliefs.
Try to uncover this by asking, “You’re giving me an argument for Christianity, but is this what convinced you?  If not, why don’t you give me the argument that made you a Christian?”
Photo credit: Wikimedia
1 Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (Freeman, 2002), p. 283.
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Five Emotional Pro-Choice Arguments

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In the last post, I argued for a spectrum from a single cell (not a person) to a newborn baby (a person).  This is in response to pro-life advocates who deny this spectrum to argue that we have a “baby” from newborn all the way back to that single cell.
I’d like to make five arguments in favor of my position.  To do that, I’ll try to bypass the intellect to some extent and appeal to emotion.
1. Child vs. Embryos.  Suppose the fertility clinic were on fire, and you could save either a five-year-old child or ten frozen embryos.  Which would you pick?
Of course, everyone would save the child.
But now imagine the same situation two years later.  The ten embryos have become one-year-old babies and the child is now seven years old.  Which would you save?  Obviously, the ten babies.
As an aside, note that the decision in the second instance is much tougher.  In the first, we lost ten insensate embryos, but in the second, it’s a child.  No one equates a newborn or a child with an invisible clump of cells.
2. Different Reactions to Abortion Procedures.  Anti-abortionists focus on the horror of a late-term abortion.  Did you ever wonder why they don’t focus instead on a woman swallowing a Plan B (emergency contraceptive) pill?  Or a drug-induced abortion (the most common procedure for first-trimester abortions)?  Imagine anti-abortion activists carrying signs, not with a photo of an eight-month-old fetus but with life-size drawings of a 100-cell human blastocyst.  The signs would appear blank.
By choosing as they do, they admit that all procedures are not equal and that there is a spectrum.  Their story is more powerful the older the fetus is.  A blastocyst is very unlike a person, but an 8-month-old fetus is very much like a person.
3. Slaughtering Animals for Food.  Which would be more horrible to watch: a woman swallowing a pill of Plan B or a cow going through a slaughterhouse?  The cow can experience fear and pain, while the single cell can experience neither.  The cell’s claim to superiority is only its potential to be a person.
There’s a big difference from what is and what might be.  A blastocyst has impressive potential but has vastly fewer cells than the brain of a fly.  The only trait it shares with a person is its DNA, a vague and abstract commonality.
And there’s no guarantee that our imagined cell will develop properly during pregnancy.  A single cell might become a human baby or not, just like betting $1000 on black at the roulette table might win or not.  With half of all pregnancies ending in spontaneous (natural) abortion, the odds for each are about the same.
4. Cloning and Skin Cells.  Imagine that in ten years we are able to clone a human from a single skin cell.  Would you never scratch your skin to avoid killing a potential human being, like the Jain who wears mesh over his face to avoid accidentally breathing in a flying insect?  And if not—if “potential human being” is very different in your mind from “human being”—then why not see that same difference between a single cell and a newborn baby?
5. Saving Another Person’s Life.  If a blastocyst is a person, would you give up your life for it?  You might risk your life to save a stranger; is the same true for a stranger’s blastocyst?
What we value changes across this spectrum, and, while we might intellectually argue that a human is a human is a human, emotionally we don’t see both ends of the spectrum the same.
Let me make clear that I’m simply arguing for the existence of a spectrum.  We can agree on this and still disagree on when the okay/not-okay line is for abortion.  The status quo seems to resolve this well: society decides on the upper bounds and then allows girls and women to choose.
Show me why a single fertilized human egg cell is equivalent to a trillion-cell newborn.  It’s not equivalent in any important biological sense; why should it be equivalent morally?
Next time: What’s Wrong with the Pro-Life Position?
Photo credit: ebmarquez
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The “God is Simple” Argument

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In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said, “God, or any intelligent, decision-making calculating agent, is complex, which is another way of saying improbable.” But is God complex? Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argued that he is not:

According to much classical theology (Thomas Aquinas, for example) God is simple, and simple in a very strong sense.… So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, not complex.

Seriously? We’re consulting a 13th century scholar to understand modern cosmology? Modern science takes us to the Big Bang, and we need Thomas Aquinas to figure out the remaining riddles?
Here’s philosopher William Lane Craig’s input:

As a mind without a body, God is amazingly simple. Being immaterial, He has no physical parts. Therefore to postulate a pure Mind as the explanation of fine-tuning is the height of simplicity!

So anything that isn’t physical is simple? Sure—something that isn’t physical is maximally simple physically because it doesn’t exist physically. But that doesn’t help us with immaterial things, whatever they are. I don’t know what it means to be an immaterial mind, so I have no way of evaluating its complexity. Incredibly, neither apologist gives any evidence of the claim that God is simple. They seem to have no way of evaluating its complexity either and propose we just take their word for it.
Of course, science has shown that complex can come from simple. For example, we see this in the formation of snowflakes, in erosion, or in evolution. From a handful of natural rules comes complexity—no intelligence required.
But we’re talking about something quite different—an intelligent creator. And in every creative instance we know of (the creation of a car, the creation of a bee hive, the creation of a bird’s nest), the creator is more complex than the creation. Plantinga’s God would be the most stupendous counterexample to the axiom that, in the case of designed things, simple comes from complex, and yet we’re supposed to take this claim on faith.
But there’s a way to cut through all this. Is God as simple as Plantinga or Craig imagine? Then demonstrate this—make us one. Humanity can make complex things like a microprocessor, the worldwide telephone system, and a 747, so making this “amazingly simple” thing shouldn’t be hard. Or, if we don’t have the materials, they can at least give us the blueprints.
Surely they will fail in this challenge and admit that they have no clue how to build a God. In that case, how can they critique the simplicity of such a being? Now that their argument that God is simple has evaporated, we’re back to Dawkins’ argument that a complex God is improbable.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
Related links:

  • Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion (A Review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion),” Christianity Today, March 2007.
  • William Lane Craig, “Dawkins’ Delusion,” Reasonable Faith, 2009.
  • “Divine Simplicity,” Wikipedia. (Note: neither Craig nor Plantinga accept this view.)