Let me share with you an article that I enjoyed. And when I say “enjoyed,” I mean, “was baffled by.”

The article is “The Bible and Miracles: Fact or Fantasy?” and it proposes rules for separating history from myth and legend. It concludes that the Bible’s miracles are history.

Four simple rules

1. Unlike myths, biblical miracles are presented in a historical context, that is, in conjunction with actual historical events, many of which can be verified by archeology.

Yes, myths are often unconnected with human history, but that’s a quibble for this conversation (more on the distinctions between myths and legends here). Let’s consider legends instead, which typically are presented in a historical context. For example, the legend of King Arthur and Merlin was set in England around 600. The legend of William Tell was set in Switzerland around 1300. The legend of Jesus the miracle worker could be set in Palestine around 30.

Archeology supports biblical miracles no more than it does the supernatural stories in the Iliad. Yes, there was a Jericho and yes, there was a Troy, but archeology gives no support to the supernatural.

2. Miracles are presented in a simple, matter-of-fact style. No fanfare, sometimes not even a comment.

I don’t think that Jesus’s miracles are treated any more matter-of-factly than Merlin’s magic, the gods’ supernatural actions in the Iliad, or Paul Bunyan’s overlarge feats.

3. Miracles occur in a framework of reason and logic. There are no miracles just for the sake of miracles. They are not performed for show; they are not “magic tricks” designed to entertain the reader.

The Bible’s miracles are not entertainment, but they are done to make a point. Jesus performed his miracles “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matt. 9:6).

4. Miracles are performed in the presence of hundreds, sometimes thousands of witnesses; and many of the witnesses are still alive at the time the events are written down.

No, the stories claim that miracles were performed in the presence of many eyewitnesses. There is no independent historical documentation of a single miracle. For example, I’ve pointed out the weakness of Paul’s claim of 500 eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus here.

Let’s test drive these rules

To illustrate a non-miracle, the author gives this example:

Even now, over 200 years after the fact, would anyone believe someone today who wrote that George Washington calmed the Delaware River and walked across it while his soldiers rowed?

We have the author’s own foolproof 4-part method to separate miracle from legend. Here’s an example; let’s try it out.

1. “Washington walked across the Delaware River” is in a historical context. No one doubts that the Continental Army crossed that river the night of December 25, 1776 to attack enemy forces in Trenton.

2. Matter of fact style? Check. It’s easy to imagine the story told in this style.

3. Not performed as a trick or entertainment? Check. Washington had to get across somehow, and he could’ve walked across the water as a morale booster for the troops.

4. Performed in the presence of hundreds of witnesses? Check. History records 2400 soldiers in the group that crossed with Washington.

According to the author’s own checklist, he would be obliged to accept this account of Washington walking on water as an actual miracle. Since this account would be written about our own country’s history in Modern English, it would be more reliable and accessible than gospel stories written in 2000-year-old Greek from an ancient culture.

Parallel the gospel story with a modern analogy

The author bristles at the concern that the gospel story is unreliable history because it was initially passed on as oral history and written long after the events. He proposes a parallel. Compare Jesus known only through gospels written decades after his death with Mahatma Gandhi known only through the film Gandhi, which was produced decades after his death.

To understand the early readers of the gospels, consider ourselves learning about Gandhi only through the film. But the author wants us to imagine a very different Gandhi. This Gandhi does the things that Jesus did: he proclaims himself divine, heals the sick, and multiplies loaves and fishes. Would you believe it?

Now go further. Would you believe that this Gandhi died and resurrected? That He died for your sins? Would you drop everything to accept this Gandhi’s call to follow Him?

Of course not. That’s a helpful parallel, and this Christian author has nicely demonstrated that the gospel claim is ridiculous.

[SFX: record scratch]

Nope, that’s not the conclusion of this author. He tries to pull the bacon out of the fire:

No one could have fabricated a story as that told in the gospels with the expectation that people would believe it. Yet believe it they did. Why? Because it happened, that’s why! And the apostles that preached the gospel must have demonstrated its truth by performing the same miracles. It’s the only answer that makes sense. No one in their right mind would have concocted those stories,* because no one in their right mind would believe them without reason.

* I argue that the gospel story is legend, not that it was deliberately invented.

Wow—you can’t make this stuff up. This author admits that the gospel story is crazy but tries to salvage his position by spinning this as a good thing. It’s like early church father Tertullian who is quoted as writing, “I believe because it is absurd.”

Yeah, seek out the absurdity. That’s a good way to find truth. Or not.

This reminds me of Sathya Sai Baba, another Indian leader who died a few years ago with millions of followers. He is claimed to have performed almost all of Jesus’ miracles, including raising from the dead. That the absurd stories are true is the only answer that makes sense, right?

The Son of God died:
it is wholly believable because it is absurd;
he was buried and rose again,
which is certain because it is impossible.
— Tertullian, early church father

Photo credit: kymillman

Christians, if you thought the atheist philosophy professor played by Kevin Sorbo in the movie “God’s Not Dead” (my review here) was scary, have you wondered what the real thing would be like? Why not find out? I dare you.

More precisely, a real atheist philosophy professor dares you. Fellow Patheos blogger Dr. Daniel Fincke (“Camels With Hammers”) is an ex-Christian with 11 years of experience as a college philosophy professor, and he is planning two online summer classes, “God’s Not Dead? How an Unscripted Philosopher can Disprove God” and “Debating the Existence of God.” My guess is that Daniel is way less obnoxious than the guy in the movie, but this won’t be Hollywood. He will be doing this for real.

If you are intrigued by apologetics and philosophy and want to be Christian hero Josh Wheaton with the training wheels off, give it a try. I dare you.

My challenge

While we’re chatting, let me remind you of my own challenge. Christian conferences often try to train attendees how to deal with atheist arguments. Problem is, the “arguments” are presented by Christians. I can’t count the number of podcasts I’ve heard and blog posts I’ve read that attempt to present an atheist argument, and the argument is tragically weak. When you meet me on the street, that’s not what you’re going to have to contend with.

You want to hear real atheist arguments? Invite an atheist to your conference; they’ll be happy to share them. Invite me, and I’ll do it for free.

Send your conference organizer this link: “Christians: Why You Need an Atheist Speaker at Your Next Conference.”

I’m always looking for an innovative new argument for Christian claims, and “Jesus Christ: Greater Than You Knew, Too Great Not To Be True” by Tom Gilson didn’t disappoint. It didn’t disappoint because I expected it to be unpersuasive.

And the perpetual quest continues …

While we’re here, however, let’s take a look. The key point in Gilson’s argument, as you might guess from the title, is that Jesus is perfect—too perfect to be merely literature or legend. He illustrates this with three questions.

1. Who are the most powerful characters in all of human history and imagination? He gives as examples Andrew Carnegie, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Superman. A few additional names come to mind, so I’ll add John Connor from the Terminator movies, the Watchmen (comics heroes), Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert E. Lee.

Gilson would add Jesus to this list, but let’s consider this. He would say that Jesus was God and therefore the creator of everything. Let’s ignore the fact that the Trinity was an invention centuries after the gospels and consider what God supposedly created. In Genesis 1, God reshapes existing Play-Doh to make the water-dome world of the Sumerians. The stars are insignificant in this story and their creation gets half a verse, though science tells us that the universe is 10²⁷ times larger than the earth.

The actual universe is impressive, but God’s art project is minor by comparison. Sure, let’s add Jesus/God, but remember the tiny “universe” he’s credited with creating.

2. Who are the most self-sacrificial, other-oriented, giving, and caring persons? Gilson suggests Mother Teresa and Sir Galahad. (He clearly views Teresa as the saint-to-be that many Christians imagine rather than the controversial figure who celebrated suffering rather than heal disease.)

We don’t need fiction or mythology to find self-sacrifice. The internet is full of stories of actual heroes who put themselves in danger to rescue strangers from drowning or from burning buildings. There are military personnel who died to save their comrades. A famous example within Christian circles is Maximilian Kolbe, a friar imprisoned in Auschwitz who volunteered to die in the place of a stranger.

About the unsung heroism in everyday life, author Peggy Noonan said,

The bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn’t take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again.

Taking the noble or self-sacrificing path is a big deal for most people because we have a choice. Gilson, of course, wants to add Jesus to this list, but his sacrifice isn’t as substantial as Gilson seems to imagine. Jesus didn’t experience any agonizing choice; he simply knew the right path and took it. His sacrifice was a painful weekend—frankly, not that big a deal.

3. Who belongs on both lists? Gilson proposes Gandalf and Superman for this category but imagines Jesus standing alone, unrivaled in history and fiction as “a character of unparalleled power and self-sacrifice, with no mar or imperfection of any sort.”

But there are other contenders. Obi-wan Kenobi from Star Wars sacrificed himself for the benefit of Luke and the rebel cause—and this was the old-fashioned, died-and-stayed-dead kind of sacrifice. Neo from The Matrix trilogy sacrificed his life to save the city of Zion. Shiva is a Hindu god who drank poison to protect the universe.

My choice for this category is Prometheus, the god who brought fire to mankind. He was punished by being chained to a rock and having an eagle eat his liver each day, only to have it regrow overnight for the agonizing process to repeat. (And Christians think that Jesus had it rough.)

What did Jesus do?

Jesus gave us salvation, a solution to a problem he invented, while Prometheus gave us fire, something that’s actually objectively useful.

If we separate Jesus from the rest of the Trinity and look at just what the New Testament tells us, Jesus didn’t do much. He killed a fig tree. He cured some lepers. He raised Lazarus. Sure, Jesus cured by magic, and that’s pretty cool, but he did less good in his healing ministry than a single modern doctor does. He didn’t eliminate smallpox, for example—modern medicine did.

Of course, the New Testament is where we see the doctrine of hell, though I’m not sure that’s much to celebrate.

Gilson scratches his head trying to figure out the skeptical alternative to the Christian interpretation. We have a story was transmitted orally for decades as it moved from Jewish culture into a new Greek culture (with precedents for dying-and-rising gods, virgin birth, and other elements found in the gospel story), and you can’t see how legend could explain this? What’s left unexplained? It’s like Gilson has never heard of any new religion developing.

He marvels at the power of the gospel story, but why is that surprising? It was polished through retellings for decades before being written, and then reinterpreted for centuries after that as church fathers haggled over points of doctrine.

The problem with Gilson’s apologetic

Gilson is a Jesus fanboy, and he has an inflated view of the contribution of Jesus. He tells us that any other literary or historical sacrifice “[pales] beside the sacrifice of Christ.” He was “a character of moral excellence beyond any other in all history or human imagination.” No competing story gets the “crucial aspect of Jesus’ character—his perfect power and perfect goodness—exactly right, without flaw.”

I think we’ve found the problem. Was Jesus that great? Not if you read the gospels.

• Jesus didn’t stop slavery, didn’t reject polygamy, and didn’t denounce God’s genocide in the Old Testament. Gilson acknowledges without rebuttal that Jesus did nothing to addressing the issues that we reject today.
• Jesus wanted faith without evidence, as in the Doubting Thomas story (“blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed”).
• Jesus said that his mission was only to the “lost sheep of Israel” and cautioned his disciples to avoid wasting time with those who couldn’t appreciate the message (“don’t cast your pearls before swine”).
• Jesus demanded single-minded devotion (“those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples”).
• Jesus demanded faith instead of planning for the future (“take no thought for the morrow”; “do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear”)

It may be that Jesus towers over all other figures from history and fiction in Gilson’s mind, but the gospel story itself shows him to be a not-especially-perfect deity. This is nicely explained as legendary development.

A thorough knowledge of the bible
is worth about as much
as a thorough knowledge of Harry Potter.
— JT Eberhard

Photo credit: sonofgodresources.com

Today is the five-year anniversary for Patheos, the site that hosts this blog. Patheos is now in the top 500 U.S. websites and is the world’s largest site for several communities, including atheists. Congratulations, Patheos!

I’ve been blogging at Patheos for close to two years (and solo for a year before that). When I started, there were about ten Patheos atheist blogs, and now there are 21. Patheos hosts more than 300 blogs exploring many categories of thought.

The Cross Examined blog has gotten almost 900,000 total views. Patheos as a whole will generate that twice in a week, but that sounds like a nice bit of impact to me. And I don’t make the views—you do. This wouldn’t work without you, and I’m very appreciative for your time and feedback.

Figuring out what content connects with the audience and what doesn’t is sometimes difficult. Maybe the headline was boring (if yesterday’s Doonesbury is good advice, I need to work “sideboob” into my titles more). Maybe the post just didn’t get the Facebook or reddit love that it deserved. Or more likely it was just a lot less insightful or interesting than I thought. Ah well—I always learn from the process.

I’ll take this fifth birthday opportunity to muse on five categories of blog posts during my time at Patheos.

1: “10 Reasons the Crucifixion Story Makes No Sense”

This post has been my most popular. Each of the ten points is touched on only briefly, but the post seems to be a useful high-level summary of skeptical criticism of this part of the gospels. Christians who find the sin/redemption story compelling would probably dismiss this post as no challenge to their faith, but that’s not where it ends. These Christians would likely also think that the crucifixion story is compelling to outsiders. It’s not.

2: Social issues

Google ranks “20 Arguments Against Abortion, Rebutted” first for the search “arguments against abortion.” That’s ironic, since it’s a rebuttal of those arguments, and I wonder how many pro-lifers arrive here to find something they didn’t expect. Still, I’m not complaining. I hope it’s provocative while being civil.

Christianity is an 800-pound gorilla within society. It does some good, but it also does a lot of harm, and I’ve responded to some of those social issues—homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Creationism, church/state separation, the First Amendment, and so on.

Institutions like Christianity are inherently conservative, but the paradox is that this one claims to have a direct line to the source of morality. Christianity should be leading the way rather than digging in its heels. Let me quickly acknowledge that some Christians are doing honorable work to improve society, but theirs is too often the still, small voice amidst the wind and earthquake.

3: History

I’ve found the history behind Christianity to be both more complicated and less supportive of confident Christian pronouncements than I expected. I’ve written about:

• biblical polytheism
• the immense gulf of understanding separating us from the events of Jesus’s day
• the illogic of the Garden of Eden, Flood, and Resurrection stories
• the weakness of claims of prophecy (Psalm 22, Isaiah 7, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9)
• the Mesopotamian Combat Myth (in which good conquers chaos) present in the Old Testament
• the irrelevance of our vast number of New Testament manuscripts

In general, I’ve been fascinated at how easily some icons of Christian thought have crumbled with research. That’s not to say that there’s nothing there, but what’s there often turns out to be different from we’ve been told.

4: Apologetics

Apologetics, the intellectual arguments in favor of Christianity, are what got me into this study over a decade ago. I’ve blogged about the Transcendental Argument, Argument from Design, Argument from Morality, Cosmological Argument, and others.

I’ve also responded to arguments from about two dozen apologists. Repeat offenders include William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Lee Strobel, Frank Turek, and John Hagee. Their arguments are widespread, and I will continue to respond to what appear to be the most popular.

5: Trying on some new things

New projects keep it lively. I made a short video, “Are the Gospels Eyewitness Accounts?” I wrote a flash fiction piece, “Interloper.” I wrote my second novel exploring atheism and Christianity, A Modern Christmas Carol.

I also issued a public challenge to organizers of Christian apologetics conferences: you say that your apologetics can withstand the challenge? Then don’t have a Christian present the atheist position; bring in an atheist. You’ll get the last word, but don’t you want your attendees to understand the real challenge? Give me an audience, and I’ll do it for free. (So far, no takers. Just intimidated, I guess?)

As a blogger, sometimes I feel like the new teacher who’s just a chapter ahead of the students in the book. I’ll never be a biblical scholar, but if I can learn interesting things and pass them on to you, that will be enough. If you’ve enjoyed reading along, I hope you’ll continue to share the journey with me.

So what’s next? Do you have ideas for improvement? Any fundamentals that I need to focus on or new areas to explore?

Faith is not an excuse for getting “there” last.
It’s an obligation to get there first.
— Leonard Pitts, speaking about how Christianity
often lags society in knowing the right thing to do

Photo credit: Robo Android

Several years ago, I attended a lecture by John Lennox, an Oxford mathematics professor turned evangelist. He touched briefly on the fine-tuning argument, only to say that it doesn’t exclude God. Okay, that’s true, but “you haven’t excluded God yet” isn’t much of an apologetic argument.

I’ve discussed the role of the multiverse in dismissing the fine-tuning argument here, here, and most recently here. This time, I’d like to look at a few less-well-known arguments.

Coarse Tuning

The first argument that undercuts the fine-tuning argument comes from the article, “Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument.”

First, start with the fine-tuning argument. We have a handful of physical constants so carefully balanced that if any of them were tweaked by the tiniest amount, life in the universe would be impossible.

Imagine an n-dimensional space, with one axis for each of the different constants we’re considering. Assume that these constants can (in principle) be anything. There’s a tiny volume in this space within which life is possible, but the total space is infinite in size. What’s the probability that you’d hit the sweet spot by chance? Tiny volume ÷ infinite space = 0, so the probability is zero. And that’s the punch line for this argument: if the likelihood of randomly hitting this life-giving sweet spot is infinitesimally small, there must be a designer.

Now, imagine that the volume is actually quite large—that is, that the values that define our universe could be changed in any dimension by ten orders of magnitude. This is the coarse-tuning situation. If we’re in the middle of a sweet spot that’s this huge—it’s 10 billion on each side—who would be making the fine-tuning argument now? But the problem remains! That vastly bigger volume ÷ infinite space is still zero. The likelihood of randomly hitting this sweet spot remains infinitesimally small, but we’ve agreed that this is not remarkable. Conclusion: the punch line that implies a designer fails. Said another way, the fine-tuning argument is no stronger than the coarse-tuning argument. Why then would no apologist make a coarse-tuning argument?

Monkey God

Physicist Vic Stenger directly confronts the fine-tuning argument with his Monkey God experiment (article here and simulation here). He takes four constants from which can be computed the average lifetime of a star, the size of planets, and other traits that would predict whether a universe might allow life. His simulation randomly varies these constants within a range five orders of magnitude higher and five lower than their actual values to see what kind of universe the combination creates. His conclusion: “A wide variation of constants of physics has been shown to lead to universes that are long-lived enough for complex matter to evolve.” We know so little about life that there is little to say about whether life would come from this complex matter, but this seems a strong counterexample.

Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis  

Another response is Keith Parsons’ critique of the Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis (ASUH). The fine-tuning argument says that the ASUH is very unlikely. The multiverse is the obvious atheist response, but the ASUH imagines a single universe. What response is possible if the multiverse isn’t an option?

If there is only one universe, Parsons wonders, what sense does it make to say that the constants that define that universe could be something else? How could they be anything without other universes for them to be in? “If the universe is the ultimate brute fact, it is neither likely nor unlikely, probable or improbable; it simply is.” We don’t have billions of universes to evaluate, some designed and some natural, so that we have some probabilistic framework in which to place our own universe. Therefore, imagining that we can evaluate the likelihood of our own poorly understood universe makes no sense. Our universe looks designed? Compared to what?

We must say that the values of the constants are neither probable nor improbable; they just are. In that case, as the proponent of the ASUH sees it, the only rational expectation of the values of the constants is that they will be whatever we find them to be.

ASUH supporters posit the universe and its laws as brute, inexplicable facts, but Christian apologists do the same. They posit God as a brute, inexplicable fact.

Parsons concludes by turning the fine-tuning argument on the apologist. If we’re insanely lucky to be in a life-friendly universe, there must have been a supernatural Fine Tuner to create this universe. But we must recursively apply this same thinking to the Fine Tuner. There’s a myriad of conceivable supernatural beings. Christians must marvel at our good fortune to have one who wanted us (rather than any of the infinite number of other possible intelligent life forms) and had the power to fine tune the universe so that we’re here to seek out this Creator.

Evaluating all the probabilities

Is the fine-tuning argument even well formed? It says:

1. The probability of Hypothesis 1 is very small

2. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is true

Wait a minute—let’s find out the probability of Hypothesis 2 before we make any conclusions!

We’re evaluating the probability of our universe with its parameters (H1) against the probability of God (H2) without having any idea what the probability of God is. And since the fine-tuning argument is trying to establish the probability of God, it’s circular reasoning if that’s one of the inputs to the process!

One snappy answer is to say that most people throughout history have been theists, so atheist skepticism at least loses the popularity contest. However, this unanimity falls apart when we ask these theists the most basic questions: How many gods are there? What are their names? Why are humans here, and what is our purpose with respect to these god(s)? Pick any religion, and the majority of the world thinks that its answers to those questions are wrong.

What does the theist admit when using this argument?

Consider the theist’s desperation in advancing an argument like this. For most plausible claims of existence, we are given evidence. You want to know what “the sun” is? Just look up on a sunny day. Sometimes it’s direct evidence, though sometimes it’s evidence through instruments (telescopes, microscopes, etc.).

For God, though, we get just a vague shadow. If God loves us and desperately wants us to know him, he would make his existence known. He doesn’t.

So—option B—we assume God’s existence (for no good reason, but ignore that for now) and say that he wants to be an enigma for his own reasons that are unknowable to us. This thinking is necessary for the fine-tuning argument. But, of course, if he wanted to be hidden, he would be so! If you’re playing hide and seek with God, you will lose. He’s God—he could leave no trace, and there would be no enigma.

That leaves only option C for the Christian: that God deliberately leaves just the vaguest of clues—only enough to tease the seeker. This is rarely enough to give complete confidence, so the Christian is always on edge, never quite sure whether he’s got it right or that he’s going to hell. The Christian is like a pigeon in a B.F. Skinner experiment on intermittent reinforcement.

Mother Teresa wrote about her doubts, “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”

By arguing for deistic arguments like the fine-tuning argument, apologists argue for this trickster god.

The skeptical mind prefers to rest in the mystery of the visible world
without going beyond it to a further invisible mystery.
— John Hick

Photo credit: Wikimedia