Monthly Archives: February 2018

The Most Popular Logical Fallacy in Christian Discourse

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I wade through many Christians’ comments and blog posts in which the point boils down to something like, “I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists.” Or, “I got that job after I prayed for it; therefore, God exists.” Or, “I just know that Grandpa is in heaven; therefore, God exists.”

These Christians imagine a situation like this:

where the arrow indicates causation. That is, God exists, and this causes my sense of God’s presence.

The argument can be expressed more formally:

  1. If God existed, I would sense his presence
  2. I sense God’s presence
  3. Therefore, God exists.

Formally, the structure of this argument is:

  1. If P then Q
  2. Q
  3. Therefore, P

But any argument of this form is a logical fallacy. Specifically, this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

It’s easy to see that this is a fallacy. Here’s another argument using this form:

  1. If it’s raining, then I have my umbrella
  2. I have my umbrella
  3. Therefore, it’s raining.

The conclusion in step 3 doesn’t follow because I could have lots of other reasons for having my umbrella. Maybe it completes my outfit. Maybe I want to fly like Mary Poppins. Maybe I need it to act out a Monty Python silly walk or Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain.” Maybe it’s a weapon. Maybe I always carry it, just in case.

The same is true in the original “I sense God’s presence” case. Here, too, there could be more than just the one cause. The beginning of a more complete map of causes might look something like this:

where HAAD = Hyperactive Agency Detector, a brain trait that natural selection could have favored in early humans. Those timid ones who imagined agency (intelligence) behind a rustling in the bushes would run away and live, while those who thought, “Not to worry—probably just the wind” might pay for an error with their lives. A sound might be only the wind or a squirrel . . . or it might be a leopard. Those who survived (our ancestors) would be the ones with a strong hyperactive agency detector, which occasionally saw agency where there wasn’t any. For example, this HAAD might assign agency to thunder, drought, and illness.

In this diagram, two possibilities are shown that could create the Christian’s sense of God’s presence, and there might be many more.

Learning correct logical inferences and the long list logical fallacies won’t hurt anyone eager to think more rationally, but if you only learn one, this might be a good one to understand and avoid.

This crime called blasphemy
was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines
not able to take care of themselves.
― Robert G. Ingersoll

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/23/14.)

Image via Tim Green, CC license

 

9 Responses to Christian Hell (3 of 3)

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Let’s conclude our critique of the Christian idea of hell with one final response. This one’s a biggie.

I responded to William Lane Craig’s justification for hell here, and this series of posts critiquing Christian hell begins here. We’ll conclude with one final point.

9. Heaven is hellish

How can you be happy in heaven, knowing of the billions of people in torment in hell, especially if heaven gives you wisdom or enlightenment to more clearly perceive right and wrong? One response is that our human compassion must be deadened so that we’re no longer concerned about the suffering. Thomas Aquinas’s logic went like this: “Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned.” By this view, heaven is so horrible a place that one must be anesthetized to endure it.

The opposite argument—that those in heaven will celebrate the torture—is also popular. To show how consistent this schadenfreude is throughout Christian opinion, I’ll share a number of quotes. First, from the early church fathers:

What a spectacle . . . when the world . . . shall be consumed in one great flame! . . . What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see . . . illustrious monarchs . . . groaning in the lowest darkness, philosophers . . . as fire consumes them!
— Tertullian (d. 240)

They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . . . The saints’ . . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted . . . with the eternal sufferings of the lost.
— Augustine (d. 430)

From thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas:

The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude more thoroughly, and give more abundant thanks to God for it, a perfect sight of punishment of the damned is granted them.

From the First Great Awakening (early eighteenth century):

The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven. The sight of hell-torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever. It will not only make them more sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace of God in their happiness, but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it will make them more sensible of their own happiness
— Rev. Jonathan Edwards

The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the Judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say “Amen!” to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom. The godly parent shall say “Hallelujah!” at the passing of the sentence of his ungodly child; and the godly child shall from his heart approve the damnation of his wicked parent who begot him and the mother who bore him.
— Rev. Thomas Boston

Though Christian apologists usually have the tact to tap dance around this issue today, this “God’s plan must be perfect . . . somehow” attitude is sometimes confronted frankly. A Catholic Truth Society pamphlet from fifty years ago said, “What will it be like for a mother in heaven who sees her son burning in hell? She will glorify the justice of God.”

Besides abandoning the entire senseless jumble of claims, what option do they have? 

The God that holds you over the pit of hell,
much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire,
abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked:
his wrath towards you burns like fire;
he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else,
but to be cast into the fire . . .
you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes,
than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
— Jonathan Edwards,
“Sinners in the hands of an angry god” (1741)

 Image via Quinn Dombrowski, CC license

9 Responses to Christian Hell (2 of 3)

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Let’s continue with a critique of the Christian idea of hell. I responded to William Lane Craig’s justification for hell here, and the first three responses to hell are here.

4. Substitutionary atonement

Substitutionary atonement (the punishment of Jesus substitutes for the punishment we deserve) is another way in which God is out of step with a modern sense of justice.

Christianity tells us that we’re bad. In fact, we’re so bad that we can never deserve heaven, no matter what good we do in our miserable little lives. But lucky for us, Jesus took on our sins-to-be in a Bronze-Age-style human sacrifice, satisfying God’s justifiable rage. Now we’re washed clean and can deserve heaven, but more questions arise. Why was Jesus an afterthought in God’s perfect plan? Shouldn’t Jesus have been there from the beginning? How can an all-wise and all-loving god get angry at imperfect beings’ imperfections? How can an omniscient god be angry at something that he foresaw before he even started the project?

But those questions are a tangent. Think of how wrong substitutionary atonement would be for Western justice. In cases where the justice system discovers that the wrong person was imprisoned for a crime, no one says, “Well, someone received punishment, and that’s all that matters.”

See also: Criticizing the Logic of the Atonement

5. Free will

Apologist Norm Geisler argued that atheists wouldn’t like a world with God as a cosmic nanny, always clearing any dangers from the path ahead. Atheists are outraged when God lets people die from injustice, he says, but what if God gave them their wish? The murderer’s bullet would turn to butter, the wall would turn into water just before the car crashed into it, and so on. There would be no moral consequences and no chance for moral development in such a world where free will is constrained to permit only good actions.

But our free will is already constrained. I can’t read minds, I can’t fly, I can’t see x-rays, I don’t have telekinetic killing power, and I don’t have laser eyes. Nevertheless, I muddle along despite all these constraints on my free will. There’s no evidence that a loving god carefully tuned the traits of our reality to give us a just-right Goldilocks world where we have some character-building challenge but not too much. Instead, this is just one more Christian attempt to paper over the lack of evidence for God.

You’d think that Christians would find the opportunity to show evidence for God, but here as with similar issues, Christian apologists are only eager to rationalize away the lack of evidence.

“What about here?” we ask. “Shouldn’t we see evidence of God here?”

“No,” the Christian replies, “there again things look just like there’s no God at all.”

And let’s not imagine God as a champion of free will. When God permits the murderer or rapist free will to carry out their actions, that imposes on the free will of the victims.

God as the champion of free will? Tell that to the person who is locked in hell against his will. The Bible itself tells of God deliberately trampling people’s free will.

  • He hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he wouldn’t yield to Moses (Exodus 9:12), and he hardened the hearts of the Jewish opponents of Jesus so that they wouldn’t believe (John 12:37–40).
  • “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18).
  • “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples” (Psalms 33:10).
  • “For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses” (Joshua 11:20).

6. What’s the point of life on earth?

As explored in part 1, we know that our world isn’t the greatest possible world. Heaven is far better, so why didn’t God skip a step and make us in heaven? Or if life on earth is like heaven except without the wisdom to use free will, God could just give us that wisdom.

Earth as a winnowing test is a ridiculous notion. God already knows who’s naughty and who’s nice, and he could avoid making bad people in the first place. Sure, one could handwave that the good people only get that way because of the existence of the bad ones, but (1) there’s no reason to imagine that (this is the Hypothetical God Fallacy), and (2) again, God could’ve just made us in heaven and avoided creating earth.

7. God is a poor teacher

Jesus told his followers to choose the narrow road, because most people would take the broad road to destruction (Matthew 7:13–14).

Is God so bad a teacher that most of his students fail? Many human teachers pass all of their students. You’d think that an omniscient and omnipotent teacher would do a better job.

8. God’s responsibility

If everything happens according to God’s plan, then God makes most of humanity knowing that they’re destined for hell. This doctrine of predestination is made explicit in Calvinism. While the opposite view of Arminianism rejects predestination, it’s hard to imagine an omniscient God who is nevertheless surprised and saddened when anyone is sent to hell.

Concluded with one final arguments on the illogic of hell in part 3.

Talking with theists about religion sometimes—
and by sometimes I mean almost always—
feels like “Groundhog Day,”
a painful and monotonous slog
that simply travels the same territory over and over and over.
— Godless Mama

Acknowledgment: this post has been informed by the excellent Reasonable Doubts podcast (episode rd39 @37:50 – 50:30).

Image via gags9999, CC license

Houdini vs. Sherlock Holmes

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Sometimes the door to new insight is not only unlocked but opened, and yet one refuses to go through.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the ferociously rational Sherlock Holmes, was not so rational in his personal life. He was famously deceived by the 1917 Cottingley Fairies hoax, photos of palm-sized fairies dancing with two girls in the town of Cottingley, England (I’ve written more on Conan Doyle and that hoax here).

Perhaps sorrow overrode common sense. Conan Doyle had been pushed into depression by the deaths of a number of family members during and shortly after World War I, and he saw the new spiritualism movement as a way to contact them.

His friend Harry Houdini also spent much time with spiritualism, but his focus was on debunking it. Like magician The Amazing Randi today, Houdini knew how tricks were done and exposed the charlatans.

Harry Houdini once tried to defuse Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s passion for spiritualism. Houdini performs what must have been a baffling trick for Conan Doyle and then said:

Sir Arthur, I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion. . . . I won’t tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. I devised it to show you what can be done along these lines. Now, I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily “supernatural,” or the work of “spirits,” just because you cannot explain them.

Obviously, Conan Doyle now can’t believe in spiritualism while at the same time believing that it’s all just fakery. So what does he do? He rejects the claim that it’s fakery! Given a plausible natural explanation from a reputable source, he concluded that Houdini must have been accessing real supernatural forces.

This is all the more puzzling when Conan Doyle himself took the magician’s role on at least one occasion. At a 1922 meeting of the Society of American Magicians, he previewed a test reel for an upcoming movie based on his novel The Lost World. The film showed stop-action dinosaurs feeding and fighting (video). It ain’t Jurassic Park, but it was astonishing at the time. Doyle knew that it was just artistry and technology, of course, but he kept his audience guessing. (h/t Bob Jase)

Do magicians not tell their secrets because it would violate the Magicians’ Code? Perhaps it’s more because the viewers’ excitement—the magic—would be lost when they peek behind the curtain. If Houdini had shown Conan Doyle how the trick was done, Conan Doyle would’ve responded as any of us do once we see the quite natural and even boring way a trick works.

And many of us insist on sticking with the exciting supernatural rather than the mundane natural.

I conclude [that this fallacious reasoning]
must be a product of a brain unsatisfied with doubt;
as nature abhors a vacuum,
so, too, does the brain abhor no explanation.
It therefore fills in one, no matter how unlikely.
— Michael Shermer

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/18/14.)

Image via Zastavki