Monthly Archives: June 2018

The Ridiculous Argument from Accurate Names

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I attended a Bible archaeology seminar with a speaker who had worked on the excavation of the city of Sodom—or, at least that’s what they hoped. He argued a popular point, that biblical references validated by unbiased sources (such as archaeologists verifying that a Sodom actually existed) strengthen the Bible’s case as a historical document, and these natural claims help make the case for its supernatural claims.

Argument from Accurate Place Names

Here are additional examples of this popular argument.

Near Eastern archaeology has demonstrated the historical and geographical reliability of the Bible in many important areas. (Source: E.M. Blaiklock, The New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology)

Archeology and historical analysis again and again show the accuracy of the events, locations and customs mentioned in the Bible accounts. Never has anybody been able to disprove any of the accounts. (Source: Rob Vandeweghe, Windmill Ministries)

The Credo House blog adds the discovery of the town of Jericho and several inscriptions that confirm the existence of biblical characters: the Pilate Stone, the House of David inscription, and the Caiaphas Ossuary.

The Cold Case Christianity blog gives similar examples, including:

  • Luke 3:1 mentions Lysanias the tetrarch, and inscriptions have been found confirming this.
  • Acts 13:51 says that Iconium is in Phrygia, confirmed by an inscription.
  • John 5:1–9 mentions the pool of Bethesda, confirmed by archaeology.

Here’s a final example from The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona:

In the past, the Bible has demonstrated that its accounts are trustworthy as far as they have been verified. Moreover, the Bible has never been controverted by solid historical data. Therefore, the benefit of the doubt should go to the Bible in places where it cannot be verified, when there is no evidence to the contrary, and when it seems clear that the author intended for us to understand the event as historical. (p. 31)

In short, the Bible refers to people and places that actually existed; therefore, the Bible is accurate and reliable.

Analysis

Let’s step back and see what we have here. These earnest Christian apologists would like us to believe that the Bible accurately recorded the existence of locations (Sodom, Jericho, Iconium, and the pool of Bethesda) and people (Pilate, David, Caiaphas, and Lysanias).

Okay. Is that it? This isn’t hard to accept.

Issue 1. Let me first cast just a bit of doubt on archaeological finds that are both ancient (which means that our conclusions must be tentative) and lucrative (collectors demand ancient artifacts that modern forgers are eager to provide). Some well-known Bible-era fakes are the James ossuary, the Jehoash inscription, and the ivory pomegranate of Solomon. That’s not to say that other finds are fakes but that we should be cautious.

Issue 2. Archaeology says that the Exodus didn’t happen. Does that un-convince you of anything? If not, why should the verified finds convince you?

If you’re impressed by the discovery of Sodom or Jericho, remember that Troy has also been discovered. Does that give support for the supernatural claims in the Iliad? The Iliad also mentions Perseus, the legendary founder of Mycenae, the ruins of which have also been found. Is this yet more support? Be consistent.

Issue 3. If you only want to say that the Bible makes some verified historical claims and so other as-yet-unverified natural claims should also be considered seriously, that’s fine. But surely these Christians want to go further. Surely they want this to support the Bible’s supernatural claims.

I’m happy to grant that the Bible makes many accurate historical references, but having accurate names of people and places merely gets you to the starting gate. It’s the bare minimum that we demand of a historical document. You haven’t supported the supernatural claims; you’ve simply avoided getting cut from the list of entrants being considered.

Instead of focusing on the Bible’s accurate but mundane statements, show us one thing that we thought was natural but is actually supernatural. After that point, the Bible’s supernatural claims won’t seem so surprising. A pile of validated natural claims gets you nowhere in supporting supernatural claims.

Christian apologists tell us, “The Bible isn’t inaccurate in some of its testable claims!” That this counts as a apologetic says a lot for what passes for compelling argument in some Christian circles.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man
out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
— Jonathan Swift

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/22/14.)

Image via marinnemo, CC license

 

Pygmies, Buffalo, and Christian Programming

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Half a century ago, anthropologist Colin Turnbull spent several years with Mbuti pygmies in eastern Congo. On one occasion, he took his Mbuti assistant to an overlook that offered a view of a distant plain where buffalo grazed. The Mbuti were familiar with buffalo, but they lived their lives in the forest and were not familiar with distance. The assistant pointed to the distant buffalo and asked what kind insects they were.

To him, distance was measured in meters, not kilometers, and he refused to believe that the bugs were actually huge animals.

(For you “Father Ted” fans, this was the point that Ted tried to make with dull-witted Dougal when he contrasted the plastic toy cows with cows in a field: “These are small, but the ones out there are far away.”)

Escape from Camp 14

A more debilitating example of being programmed by one’s environment is the story of a 26-year-old man who escaped in 2005 from a North Korean prison camp, then to China, then South Korea, and finally the United States. This was documented in the book Escape from Camp 14. He had been in the prison camp, not because he had committed a crime, but because he had been born there as the child of two inmates.

Though he made it to freedom, the story doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. Life had taught him since birth that survival meant husbanding precious energy by shirking work. Survival was immediate—steal food or shoes, avoid punishment, hide to rest from difficult manual labor. He adapted poorly in the West to the vaguer notion that if he didn’t arrive on time or didn’t complete his work that he might eventually lose his job.

Christian Programming

This is similar to Christians who seem programmed to not be able to see what, to atheists, seems obvious—for example, that the skepticism that Christians apply to other religions sinks theirs as well. Or that “the atheist worldview is hopeless,” even if true, is irrelevant to someone looking for the truth. Or that quoting the Bible does nothing to satisfy the atheist’s demand for evidence.

Remember the Mbuti assistant? He adjusted to the idea of distant animals and size constancy over a few days. And the Clergy Project—an intellectual halfway house for clergy who are losing or have lost the faith—shows that even the most-invested believers can choose reason over Christianity.

Study one religion, and you’ll be hooked for life.
Study two religions, and you’re done in an hour.
— Anon.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/18/14.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

Tracking Animals, Tracking God

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I dabbled with animal tracking some years ago. I read a bit and hung out with some amateur trackers. It was a fascinating study.

Animal tracking

Like any art that takes years to master, tracking can look like magic to an outsider. Imagine following an experienced tracker through the woods. They might say, “A deer came through here, going in that direction. A mature doe. About two hours ago.” You might look at the uniform foliage and wonder how they did that. Could they be making it up, having a little fun with the tenderfoot?

But ask them to show you the clues, and they might point out the twisted leaves or broken twig that you missed. Maybe the clue was grains of sand on moss, the vaguest hint of a footstep. You’d never have noticed it—unless you knew where to look.

Hmm—maybe there’s something to this after all.

Initially, it looks like magic, but what puts this squarely in the domain of the real is when it delivers. The tracker says there’s a deer over there . . . and indeed, when you get there, there’s a deer. Or a raccoon or a bear or whatever you were tracking. Over and over, the tracker delivers. What cements this conclusion is when you put the effort in to become a decent tracker yourself.

God tracking

Like a forest animal, God is also elusive. And as with forest animals, God has trackers as well. These are Christians who assure you that they’ve experienced God, and you can reliably do the same. They can show you how to pray, how to act, and how to think. They can show you the Bible passages that back up their statements. They’re certain that, with some effort, you can track God as well as they can.

But do they deliver? There are lots of Christians in the world, but most are simply reflections of their environment. Few of them became Christians through anything analogous to tracking, where evidence led them to God.

Maybe the problem is that, like animal trackers, there are good ones and bad ones. That might excuse the poor results from some Christians. That might explain the Christians who handwave away bad results by making God an unfalsifiable hypothesis. For example, these Christians might say that an answered prayer proves God and that an unanswered prayer also proves God (here, God is obviously telling you that that request was inappropriate). Or that good things are God’s gifts to you and bad things are God testing you.

All right, but then where are the reliable God trackers? Show us the Christians who pray nontrivial requests that are reliably answered and who can show the rest of us how to do the same. Show us the Christians who, like the animal tracker, can convince any patient skeptic that God exists.

What makes God trackers’ poor results even more baffling is that, unlike a shy forest animal, God is supposedly eager to be known. And yet many atheists will tell of their final months as Christians, pleading with God to make his existence known. They clearly met God more than halfway, but God might as well have been nonexistent.

To muddy the waters further, there are schools of god trackers that teach incompatible rules of discovery. Some will say that speaking in tongues is what’s required. Others, that silent meditation is the way. Ask religious sages outside of Christianity in addition, and any pretense of a single, reliable route to God is gone.

The animal tracker silently points, and, as promised, there’s the deer. The Christian evangelist talks a good story but can’t deliver.

One man’s theology 
is another man’s belly laugh. 
— Robert A. Heinlein

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/15/14.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Religion Keeps Not Finding God

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This colorful drawing is a tree of world religions. From a poorly understood past, represented as the twisting vines of ideology in the trunk, the myriad human interpretations of the divine are shown branching out like tendrils on a vine, groping for something to grab on to. Searching, ever searching, they never find, and yet new tendrils reach out with the continuous confidence that they are the one true religion.

Example 1: Tree of religion

The trunk expands into named religions 3000 years ago. Here’s one small fragment (the outer shell is the present day, with modern denominations named in green, and each curved gray ring line represents 100 years of evolution):

The tree details the evolution of the great Asian and Middle Eastern religions. Though it ignores religion from the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific, it makes a heroic attempt at what it does attempt to cover. It nicely documents the complex project that human religion has become.

Example 2: Church’s many views of government

Consider a very different look at the varieties of church. This one plots American Christian churches on a two-axis chart. The axes consider how big a role government should play in providing social services vs. how big a role it should play in imposing morality.

Here again, we see the dramatic differences in the many variant forms of Christianity (in this case, American Christianity). For example,

  • The Southern Baptist, LDS, and Church of Christ want more government involvement in morality but fewer social services.
  • Unitarians want the reverse: more social services provided by government but less government involvement in morality
  • Black churches want both: more government services and more legislation of morality
  • Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians (PCUSA) want neither

Example 3: Map of World Religions

Don’t forget the Map of World Religions (more here). Contrast the stable map of world religions (Roman Catholics in the red region over here, Hindus in green over there, and so on) with the map of world science, which is just one color. New and better ideas sweep the world of science within a decade or two, but an established religion isn’t interested in better ideas. It already thinks it has the truth and has no interest in changing.

Search for the truth

If religious claims were as obviously correct as the claim that the sun exists—that is, if they were firmly grounded in evidence—everyone would quickly agree. But that’s not the world we live in.

Alright then, suppose that religious truth does indeed exist, but it’s fuzzy or cloudy. We see, but as if “through a glass, darkly.” Why then aren’t worldwide religious beliefs at least converging on the truth? It would be like evolution, with false beliefs gradually falling away and correct beliefs encouraged and strengthened, either by divine intervention or because they matched up better with reality.

The tree of world religions above makes clear that religion is doing the opposite—diverging instead of converging. Christianity has fragmented and morphed over time as new cults and sects form. We see that same fertility in other religions. The only commonality we see across religions is humans’ interest in the supernatural.

This disconnect between religion and the reality that would ground it shows that religion is just a man-made institution. The past, illuminated by this tree, makes clear that religious guesses will continue to diverge. The quest is constant, though the goal is nonexistent.

If God exists, why do we need books to explain it?
Or preachers?
The fact that he can’t do it himself
is good evidence he does not exist
— Dan Barker

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/10/14.)

Photo credit: The 40 Foundation