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How Does the Kalam Cosmological Argument Suck? Let Me Count the Ways.

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kalam cosmological argumentWorld-famous philosopher William Lane Craig (WLC) is perhaps most famous for his popularization of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Let’s examine it to see if it is as compelling as WLC thinks.

The argument is a Muslim variant on Aristotle’s First Cause argument (something had to be the first cause; otherwise, you have causes going back forever). WLC states the argument this way:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

First premise: Whatever begins to exist has a cause

Let’s begin with that first premise. WLC defends it:

Believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic. At least with magic you’ve got a hat and a magician.

And if something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?

No … everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise—if something begins to exist, it must have a cause.

That’s the argument? Just an appeal to common sense?

WLC’s support for his philosophical claims often devolve into something akin to, “Aw, c’mon. You’ll give me that one, right? It’s obvious!” One wonders: if he’s not going to use his doctorates, maybe he should give them back.

Understand the limitations of common sense. It’s not the tool to rely on at the frontier of science. To take one example, we all know that a thing can’t be in two places at once, but quantum physics shows that it can. WLC handwaves a simple argument that works with people desperate for justification for their supernatural beliefs, but it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

1. Things don’t need a cause. Contrary to WLC’s intuition, things may indeed pop into existence without cause. That’s the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. For example, virtual particles and the electrons that come out of a decaying nucleus qualify as things that “began to exist,” and they didn’t have a cause.

WLC will say that the Copenhagen interpretation might be overturned, and that’s true. But then his premise becomes, “Whatever begins to exist might have a cause,” which doesn’t make for much of an argument.

He wonders, “Why don’t we see this happening all the time?” and the obvious answer is that it applies only at the quantum level. Indeed, the universe itself was once the size of a quantum particle, so it’s reasonable to think that causelessness could apply to the universe as well.

That’s the conclusion of cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin:

If there was nothing before the universe popped out, then what could have caused the tunneling? Remarkably, the answer is that no cause is required. In classical physics, causality dictates what happens from one moment to the next, but in quantum mechanics the behavior of physical objects is inherently unpredictable and some quantum processes have no cause at all.

To see this another way, let’s replace “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” with “Everything has a cause” and ask WLC to find a counterexample. Unless he can, he has no reason (besides supporting his agenda) to prefer his clumsier version. He can point to the Copenhagen interpretation, but that defeats his version as well. (Thanks to commenter primenumbers.)

2. We know nothing about supernatural creation. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” has a common-sense appeal, but the only “whatevers” that we know that began to exist (stars, oak trees, a dent in a fender, tsunamis) are natural. Why imagine that this common sense rule of thumb would apply to supernatural causes? And why even imagine that the supernatural exists? WLC doesn’t bother even acknowledging the problem.

3. We know nothing about creation ex nihilo. The only “begins to exist” we know of is rearrangement of existing matter and energy. For example, an oak tree begins with an acorn and builds itself from water, carbon dioxide, and other nutrients. If WLC is talking about creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), his premise has become “Whatever begins to exist from nothing has a cause.” He wants us to accept this remarkable claim though he can’t give a single example of something coming from nothing. The common sense appeal of the premise is gone.

WLC said above, “If something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?” If this is supposed to be an argument against creation ex nihilo, does he then not believe God created ex nihilo? He might want to sit down with himself to get his argument straight.

4. “Began to exist” makes little sense at the beginning. WLC wants to stretch the common sense “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” from the natural to the supernatural, from rearrangement of matter to creation ex nihilo, and from creation within time to creation before time. He’s referencing a cause before the universe has even come into existence. I’ll grant that magical creation of this sort is possible, but WLC has given no evidence to support this claim. (Thanks to A-Unicornist blog.)

First we have the earthquake, then the tsunami. First the moving car, then the dented fender. First the collection of gas moving inward by gravity, then the star. If the instant of the Big Bang is at t = 0, where is the prior cause? There is no t = –1 if time started at t = 0. How can there be a cause that works in time before there is time?

Every example WLC can point to (like tsunamis and dented fenders) is a different kind of “begins to exist” than the one he imagines, a (1) supernatural creation (2) from nothing (3) before time began, none of which have examples.

5. We have no reason for the “began to exist” caveat. Why is the premise not simply “Everything has a cause”? It’s just a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to bias the argument so that it will deliver the divine answer WLC wants. We don’t have myriad examples of things with beginnings, plus myriad examples of things that are without beginnings. That he wants to carve out a spot for his beginningless god reveals his agenda.

Since God is the only exception he imagines, WLC’s “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” is simply a disguised version of “Everything has a cause, except for God.” It’s not like he gives evidence to support this remarkable claim; he just asserts it. But if that’s the game we’re playing, I suggest a new first premise: “Everything has a cause, except for the universe.” This is certainly the simpler claim, since WLC must invent a supernatural realm to support his.

WLC will demand that I support my claim with evidence. My response: you first.

Concluded in part 2.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run
by smart people who are putting us on
or by imbeciles who really mean it.
— The Peter Principle
by Laurence F. Peter and Raymond Hull

Image credit: NASA

Using Bayes Theorem to Decide How Likely the Jesus Miracle Stories

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Christianity makes some fanciful claims: Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. Jesus turned water into wine. He raised Lazarus from the dead and was resurrected from the dead himself. He is God, one with the creator of the universe.

One response to these claims is simply to dismiss them. We could put them in the same bin as the tall tales from other mythologies. Let’s instead see how probability can be applied to questions like this. Christians and non-Christians won’t easily agree because they won’t agree on the individual probabilities. Still, an understanding of conditional probability will give us a powerful analytical tool to at least better understand these claims.

Richard Carrier (whose Skepticon video was helpful in my understanding of this material) says that conditional probability “is the mathematical model for all correct reasoning about empirical claims.”

Bayes Theorem God

An example: medical test

Let’s imagine a test for a disease that is 95% accurate. That is, it is positive 95% of the time for someone who has the disease and negative 95% of the time for someone who doesn’t. Now imagine a common disease—10% of the population has it, so in a thousand people, 100 have it and 900 don’t.

Now give those thousand people the test. For the 100 sick people, the test gives 95 positives and 5 (false) negatives. And for the 900 healthy people, it gives 855 (900 × 0.95) negatives and 45 (false) positives.

Suppose the test says that you have the disease. How worrisome is that?

You must be in either of the two groups of people with positive test results. You’re either one of the 95 who actually do have it or one of the 45 who don’t but got a false positive. The chance that you’re sick is the number of sick people who test positive divided by the total number of positives: 95/(95 + 45) = 0.68.

The probability is 68% that you have the disease.

Let’s recap: what’s the probability that you (or any random person) has the disease? 10%. But what’s the probability given that you have a positive test result? It’s 68%. That’s conditional probability—the likelihood of something given (conditional upon) something else, some additional information.

Make the test ten times more accurate and a positive test results means a 96% chance that you have the disease. Instead—and here’s where it gets interesting—make the disease one tenth as common and your likelihood of having the disease given a positive test result is 16%. Make it very rare—one in a million—and that likelihood becomes just 0.005%.*

Visual approach to the same problem

Let’s explore the original problem but visually this time.

Bayes 1

This tree is just a recap of the previous problem: we start with 1000 people, then divide them into two groups based on what we know initially (the probability of a person being sick is 0.1), and finally process this with new information, the test whose probability of a right answer is 0.95.

Applying probability to the God question

Let’s move on to the God question (I’m using an example from Richard Carrier’s video).

Bayes 2

We start with 1000 universes, places where we imagine God to exist or not. In step 2, our initial assumption about the God claim is to be generous. Knowing nothing about this “God” guy, let’s start by saying that the likelihood of his existence is 50% (P(G) means “probability of God”). In step 2, this gives us two possibilities, with 500 universes in each.

In step 3, we add our new evidence. In the medical example, the new evidence was the result of a test, and here it’s the existence of evil in our world—birth defects, natural disasters that kill thousands, slavery and other immoral institutions, and so on. This evil exists, and yet no god is doing anything about it. What is the likelihood that a benevolent God could exist but still accept the evil in our world?

We have plenty of examples of benevolent beings: the noblest humans. They’re not perfect, but we could assume that a perfectly benevolent being would be at least as benevolent as a good human. Try to imagine a benevolent human (1) who could prevent bad from happening, (2) wouldn’t be harmed for taking this action, but (3) didn’t do anything. That’s pretty inconceivable. Let’s say that the probability of this happening is one in a million. Let’s be conservative and assign the same probability of standing by and doing nothing to a perfectly benevolent god.

That’s the P(e|G) = 10–6 in the diagram above: the probability (P) of the evidence of evil (e) given (|) the existence of God (G) is one in a million (10–6).

The 500 universes on the left side of the tree have to be divided given the probability of such a god existing given the existence of evil. Only one in a million could have a god (~0 means “almost zero”).

It’s easier on the right side of the tree. The likelihood of evil existing in a godless universe is 1.

Conclusion: the existence of evil makes God very improbable.

But … but God could have an excuse

In response, the Christian may say that God has an excuse for not acting. Yes, he’s benevolent, but he’s also omniscient, and our finite minds must simply be unable to understand the justification for his inaction. (This is the Hypothetical God Fallacy—starting with a presupposition of God’s existence—but let’s ignore that for now.)

“God works in mysterious ways” doesn’t help the Christian position, and the tree shows why.

Bayes 3

Consider step 3. The conditional probability is now 1. The apologist assumes some unspecified, inconceivable (by our finite brains) reason why God has his own justifiable reasons for allowing evil. But this means we’re looking for something else. We’ve gone from searching for God (G) to searching for “God who has unspecified, inconceivable reasons to allow evil” (G′).

As you can see from step 2, this simply moves the problem around. We had nothing to go on before, so we just assigned a generous 0.5 probability for God (P(G) = 0.5). But now we have a more refined goal that can be evaluated. Now, we’re looking for a very particular God (G′), a very unlikely God, a one-in-a-million God.

Conclusion: making excuses for God makes him less likely. First you must imagine (despite the lack of evidence) supernatural beings, then those with sufficient power to create the universe (deities), then assume that there are benevolent ones that interact with us, then imagine this one-in-a-million deity who has this inconceivable excuse to allow evil, even gratuitous evil like agonizing birth defects in animals.

The mathematics of conditional probability has been applied here to the question, How likely is God given the existence of evil? We could also ask, How likely is the virgin birth given the existence of other virgin birth stories that preceded Jesus that would’ve been known in Palestine? Or, How likely is the resurrection given the existence of stories of other dying-and-rising gods?

(I respond to the book The Probability of God here. That discussion looks at the many other reasons why the Christian god claim is unlikely besides the Problem of Evil.)

This approach will probably never resolve a debate between a Christian and a non-Christian because they won’t be able to agree on probabilities. However, it does give structure to the argument and highlights the unknowns.

Oh, I know He works in mysterious ways, 
but if I worked that mysteriously I’d get fired.
— caption for Bob Mankoff cartoon

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/14/13.)

Appendix: Bayes’ Theorem

We have been using Bayes’ Theorem, though it is more commonly expressed as an equation. To see that this tree structured approach is an equivalent (though more intuitive) approach to the equation, let’s convert the medical test example above into equation form.

In that example, we first imagine a population of 1000 people and then (step 2) use the likelihood of the disease (10%) to divide that population into sick and well and then (step 3) further divide those populations into those who got positive and negative test results.

Our goal is P(s | p), the probability (P) of being sick (s) given (|) a positive test result (p). Bayes Theorem says that this is computed as follows:

Bayes 4

where ~s = the probability of not being sick.

This may look imposing, but you’re already familiar with these terms. Look at the numerator first, a measure of how likely s (being sick) is:

  • P(p | s) = the probability of a positive result given that you’re sick = 0.95 (that is, a likelihood of 95%)
  • P(s) = the probability of a random person being sick = 0.1 (the incidence is 10% in the population)

The denominator measures all possible results, your being sick and your being well. It’s the sum of the numerator (the sick likelihood) and its opposite (the not-sick likelihood), which is composed of:

  • P(p | ~s) = the probability of a positive test result given that you’re not sick (that is, a false positive), which is 0.05 (our example was simple, with false positives and false negatives both at 5%, but in the general case they could be different)
  • P(~s) = the probability of not being sick = 0.9. This one is not a variable since P(~s) = 1 – P(s).

Put these values into the equation: 0.95×0.1/(0.95×0.1 + 0.05×0.9) = 0.67857. This is what we got above with the simpler and more intuitive 95/(95 + 45).

* Here is the math behind those probabilities:
99.5/(99.5 + 4.5) = 0.957
9.5/(9.5 + 49.5) = 0.161
1/(1 + 20,000) = 0.00005

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Rationalizing Away the “Canaanite Problem” (2 of 2)

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This is the conclusion of a critique of Greg Koukl’s justification of the Canaanite problem, God’s genocide of the people living in the Promised Land. Read part 1 here.

bible genocideGod and Racism

Koukl moves on to defend God against charges of racism.

God cared nothing about skin color or national origin.

Yes, you can make the sock puppet say that God cares nothing about race. But the very concept of a Chosen People means that the Bible has plenty of other verses that say the opposite:

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of Jehovah, not even in the tenth generation. (Deuteronomy 23:3)

And why should that be a surprise? After all, the founders of those two tribes are said to have come from incestuous relations between Lot and his two daughters (Genesis 19:36–8). Yuck!

Just after the genocide passages in Deuteronomy, God forbids intermarriage with these foreign tribes (Deut. 7:3). The prohibition against intermarriage is also given in Ezra (9:2, 10:10) and Nehemiah (chapter 13). King Solomon was chastised for his foreign wives (1 Kings 11).

Biblical slavery is an excellent way to see the us/them distinction. It was limited to six years for fellow Jews, but it is for life for slaves from other tribes (Lev. 25:44–6). Let’s not imagine that God was colorblind.

The apologist might respond that the prohibitions against intermarriage were meant to avoid temptations to worship other gods. Okay, but they’re still anti-miscegeny laws (slapped down in the United States with Loving v. Virginia). Are those laws wrong today? If so, why excuse them back then?

Even some stories of Jesus show him focused only on his own tribe. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and he denies a Canaanite woman’s pleas for help with, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (Matthew 15:22–8)—see the painting above. He forbids his disciples to waste time on the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matt. 10:5–6).

Back to Koukl:

The book of Judges—a record of the “Canaanization” of Israel—ends on this sinister note: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

Sinister? Where else does “right” come from but from ourselves (both individually and as a society)? Koukl imagines an objective morality grounded outside humanity, and I impatiently await evidence that such a morality exists and is accessible (more here).

Tamp Down Those Feelings of Pity

Koukl wraps up his justification.

Without question, the Canaanite adults got their just deserts. Regarding the children, I personally take comfort in the fact that, on my view, those who die before the age of accountability are ushered immediately into Heaven.

Well, I still have questions. How can genocide be acceptable justice when it’s universally rejected today? And how can you be so comfortable with, say, a five-year-old Canaanite girl dying in agony from her wounds but then get freaked out at the abortion of a single fertilized human egg cell? What about Andrea Yates—did she really save her five children from hell by drowning them, like she hoped? And how does killing children square with, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16)?

This nonsense reminds me of William Lane Craig’s response to the genocide of the Canaanites (my critique here). His conclusion:

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

(Yeah, that’s also who I was most concerned about.)

This bizarre and embarrassing thinking is what happens when smart people are determined to shoehorn this Iron Age book into modern reality regardless of how poorly it fits. And many Christians wonder what about Christianity could possibly bother atheists …

Back to Koukl’s defense of God:

But was God right? I’ve already shown that if God needed morally sufficient reasons for killing the Canaanites, he had them in abundance.

After World War II, 24 Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremburg. Did the Allies have morally sufficient reasons for killing them all? They didn’t think so, because they weren’t all put to death. Seven received prison terms, and three were acquitted.

No, God did not have morally sufficient reasons for genocide. He may have had his own reasons that we’re unable to understand, but “morally sufficient” as those words are defined in the dictionary? Nope. And that also goes for “good,” “just,” and other imagined attributes of God.

Tamp Down Feelings of Reason as Well

Koukl encourages us to find biblical justification for his view that we should just let go and let God.

When Job lost everything dear to him, he did not rail against God, but worshipped Him

God made clear to Job that might makes right (Job 40)—not an especially good reason to justify one’s actions and compel worship.

Reflecting on the sovereignty of God, the Apostle Paul asked, “Does not the potter have a right over the clay?” (Romans 9:21)

Clay has no dreams that can be frustrated, and it can’t lose a loved one. It doesn’t feel pain when you cut it or hold it under water.

How does this irrelevant analogy help us justify God’s genocide of people who, unlike clay, are alive and do feel pain?

God is God and we are not. He is not to be measured by our standards. Rather, we are to be measured by His.

Don’t we share a moral sense with God? When Abraham haggled with God on the minimum number of good people in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18), Abraham said, “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. … Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham had no problem conversing with God using a shared moral sense. Anyway, this presupposing of God and then selecting facts to support that claim is the Hypothetical God Fallacy.

The Bible itself rejects this idea that God’s moral sense is out of reach.

Atheists read the account of Canaan’s conquest and sniff with moral indignation at the suggestion a holy God could be within His rights to destroy the Canaanite people along with their culture.

Not quite. For me, this contradiction between the good, righteous, and just god that the Christians imagine and his actions summarized in their own book is compelling evidence that what they imagine doesn’t exist.

Koukl imagines that he’s patched the holes his worldview, but it’s as leaky as ever.

I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, 
and of the most lovely benevolence: 
and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, 
so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, 
as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions 
should have proceeded from the same being.
— Thomas Jefferson

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/9/13.)

Image credit: Wikimedia

Rationalizing Away the “Canaanite Problem”

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Greg Koukl is a polished Christian apologist, but he admitted to feeling inadequate against the problem of evil. He called the Canaanite genocide “the skeleton in our closet I didn’t want anyone to bring up.”

But not anymore. Koukl gives his analysis of the Canaanite problem, with a thorough rebuttal to the problem of evil. He concludes, “I am no longer leery of the topic.”

Unfortunately, Koukl’s cheerful new confidence is misplaced.

Bible genocideHe begins with Dawkins’ famous line, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” He notes in passing,

It seems ironic that an atheist who denies the existence of objective morality can overflow so readily with moral indignation.

And I’ll ask in passing, Where’s the difficulty? Objective morality is in your mind only. Dawkins refers to the regular kind. You think that morality is objective and that we humans can access it? Show us. I’ve seen no evidence.

Koukl then lists some of the bloodthirsty passages in the Bible: God’s command that the Hebrews “utterly destroy” the tribes they will find in Canaan (Deuteronomy 7:1–5), the command that within the tribes that must be destroyed, “you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deut. 20:16–18), and the command that, for the Amalekites, Israel should “put to death men and women, children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:2–3). To see one interpretation of what that looked like, see the painting above.

Tap Dancing for the Lord

First up in Koukl’s explanation is the observation that the Bible must be understood in its context. Military narratives of the time were often exaggerated, so we can’t take God’s genocidal commands literally.

That suits me, but where does that leave the Bible as an authority? I can agree that military narratives of the time aren’t necessarily reliable history, but we also know that religious narratives of the period aren’t necessarily reliable history—consider the Greek gods, Gilgamesh, the Babylonian creation myth, and so on. If the Bible’s military narratives can’t be taken literally, why think that its supernatural narratives are more reliable?

And how does Koukl know that God couldn’t have commanded genocide? Not from the Bible—because the Bible makes clear that God did—but from his own morality. He wants to shape the Bible to fit his own morality rather than let the Bible speak for itself.

Koukl’s second point: don’t worry too much about God’s demands for genocide, because, despite what the Bible actually says, the fighting must’ve been directed only at military targets and not at families.

No, the issue isn’t how faithfully the Israelites carried out God’s commands; it’s that God himself demands genocide. That the Bible is historically unreliable is secondary to its barbaric portrait of God.

Koukl concludes:

If God did not command the utter and indiscriminate destruction of men, women, and children by Joshua’s armies, but simply authorized an appropriate cleansing military action to drive out Israel’s (and God’s) enemies—then the critic’s challenge is largely resolved.

So this was just a “cleansing military action”? Later, he calls the conquest, “an exercise of capital punishment on a national scale,” and he calls the death of children “collateral damage.” Ouch—talk about unfortunate euphemisms! No surgical strikes for this ham-fisted God. He only has the nuclear option.

Sorry—genocide is genocide. And Koukl’s own Bible selections show that God wasn’t “driving out” the inhabitants but murdering them. Pointing out that the Bible is historically untrustworthy doesn’t get you out of this bind. The issue isn’t what happened, it’s what we learn of God’s personality.

Take 2

Koukl then takes another approach: the Canaanites actually deserved to die.

God was angry. Indeed, He was furious. And with good reason. Even by ancient standards, the Canaanites were a hideously nasty bunch. Their culture was grossly immoral, decadent to its roots.

Koukl lists divination, temple prostitution, homosexuality, transvestitism, and other sins, but the worst is child sacrifice. I don’t care about a god taking offense at a “sin” that hurts no one, but we’re on the same page with the child sacrifice. His source cites evidence that thousands were killed in total.

But this rationalization runs off the tracks when we consider God’s remedy to a Canaanite culture that sacrifices children: genocide. Is the irony not obvious? God has every child killed in response to their killing a few children … and then has every other person killed for good measure.

Why does God’s palette of options include nothing more refined than would occur to a king of that time? God couldn’t teleport the Canaanites elsewhere in the world? Make their women sterile 50 years earlier? Poof them out of existence? Turn them into birds? He couldn’t create some new land so the Israelites wouldn’t need to steal someone else’s? He couldn’t drown Noah’s son Ham, the patriarch of the Canaanites, to stop the problem before it started? God is looking increasingly like a literary device added to justify the story the Jews told about themselves.

And why imagine that God is all that annoyed about child sacrifice? To teach the stiff-necked Israelites who’s boss, God said:

So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; I defiled them through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD. (Ezekiel 20:25–6)

That’ll teach ’em a lesson! Child sacrifice wasn’t an inconceivable horror to God but simply a tool. At one point in the Bible story, human sacrifice by a tribe is justification for their genocide. At another point, human sacrifice is just a humiliation that God himself uses to make a point.

A Plea for Consistency

Koukl finally calls atheists hypocritical when on the one hand they object to God’s brutal sense of justice in the Bible but on the other hand would demand that God act to stop awful events today. How about some consistency, atheists—do you want God to act or not?

Actually, it’s the atheists who are the consistent ones. A “good” god would not demand genocide in the Old Testament and would actively make the modern world a better place. The Sandy Hook school killings? 9/11? The Holocaust? Making God compatible with reality means that he can only be not good, nonexistent, or unjudgeable.

Conclude with part 2.

See also “Not Even Hitler Can Help This Christian Argument.”

God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination. 
From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet 
and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. 
My moral compass was within myself, 
not in the pages of a sacred book.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/7/13.)

Image credit: WikiPaintings

Would God Want You to Tell a Gunman, “Yes, I’m a Christian”?

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I’m sure you’ve heard of the October 1 shooting at the Oregon community college by Christopher Mercer that killed nine. Stories swirl around his motivation and why he asked victims about their religious beliefs. Was he persecuting Christians? Was he promising them an afterlife based on his Christian views? We can’t say, but the popular conclusion that his motivation was anti-Christian seems premature.

who would die for a lie?John Mark Reynolds is a fellow Patheos blogger in the Evangelical channel, and he imagines a situation where someone with a gun is singling out Christians and killing them. If placed in such a situation, he hopes that he would have the courage to stand firm rather than deny his Christian belief. “I don’t wish to die yet,” he says, “but there are some things worse than death.”

I admire that bravery. It’s pointless, thoughtless, and stupid, but it’s brave.

(Dr. Reynolds and I have had some interaction before. He was the one who sounded the alarm about anti-theistic Stalin wannabes like me eager to establish an atheistic dictatorship and rule the world. I responded here and here.)

Reynolds sums up his dilemma in facing this imaginary shooter: “Better dead than betraying the High King of Heaven.”

Would you die for your father’s honor?

Let’s imagine a parallel. Suppose that instead of God, you’re defending your biological father. The gunman declares that your father is a dirty, rotten scoundrel and will shoot you if (and only if) you disagree. Is your father’s honor in the mind of one deranged idiot worth dying for? No father would want that. No father would find it sweet or caring that his child sacrificed their life for his honor or reputation. Instead, he’d find it stupid and pointless.

This example is so meaningless—defending with your life the honor of a god that many Christians admit to occasionally doubting—that I almost wonder if Reynolds imagines an ending like that in the Abraham and Isaac story. God saved Isaac’s life at the end, and the whole thing turned out to be a bizarre and heartless test. The god who knew everything had to see if Abraham was so blindly obedient that he would follow even the most immoral of commands.

I’ve written before about Christians’ excitement over Christian persecution. Jesus promised that Christians will be persecuted, so perhaps this is vague validation that they’ve backed the right horse.

Christian persecution 2000 years ago

The article alludes to Christian martyrs in Roman times, and I guess Reynolds worries about modern Christians not living up to the sacrifices of their ancient forebears. But let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Category 1 is people forcibly rounded up and executed for being Christian. Category 2 is people given the choice of forever abandoning their religion in favor of the Roman religion or die. And category 3 is Reynolds’ imagined situation where he has the option to lie or die. Unlike the other situations, Reynolds has an easy out.

(The “Who would die for a lie?” argument is tangential, and I respond to that here.)

Would God want your sacrifice?

Reynolds gives the obvious parallel: would you lie to Nazis to protect Jews hiding in your house? He concludes, “Nazis did not deserve the truth.” But a mass murderer does? Reynolds would lie to Nazis but feels obliged to tell the truth to a madman with a gun? He might respond that it’s not the recipient of the message but the message itself. “There are no Jews here” hurts only the Nazi plan, while lying that “I’m not a Christian” makes God sad (or furious or disappointed or something).

This is the god that Christians tell us is overflowing in love and understanding … but he also wants Christians to sacrifice their lives in meaningless tests? Why worship this guy?

The Bible sometimes approves of white lies. The Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh (Exodus 1:15–21). Rahab lied to protect the Israelite spies in Jericho (Joshua 2:5).

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). Does God need anything more from you to know where you actually stand?

Reynolds wrings his hands. “There are worse things than death for a Christian and one of those things is a life of secret shame.” Shame? Then apologize afterwards to God. Could God be so stupid that he doesn’t understand what happened? He’s a billion times smarter and a billion times more understanding than any father. And what’s there to apologize for anyway? You preserved God’s gift of life—sounds like God would congratulate you for making a smart decision.

Death is not the worst thing for a Christian. A life that continues based on cowardice in the face of the ultimate test would be worse.

Personal doubt (which I’ve been pleased to see many Christians acknowledge) is a test of your faith. Performing an arbitrary procedure to save your life is not. Isn’t God smart enough to get it? What kind of delicate flower of a god would care that you didn’t defend his honor? There’s a difference between a noble cause and a stupid one.

This is a lot of drama for the honor of someone who gives no evidence of even existing.

The Bible:
because a bunch of guys who didn’t know
where the sun went at night
totally have all the answers.
— WFLAtheism

Image credit: John Doe, flickr, CC

Four Blood Moons: the Ultimate Punchline Is Nigh (2 of 2)

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In part 1, I summarized the latest in John Hagee’s “Four Blood Moons” hysteria, which is to culminate with Sunday’s lunar eclipse (totality begins 7:11pm Seattle time).

So what is supposed to happen?

We’ve seen a lot of vague handwaving, but let’s get specific. Reverend Hagee, tell us precisely what will happen and when. Hagee tells us, “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.”

Okay, but that’s rather vague. Hagee says, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’”

Surely the creator of the universe can do better? “Something is about to change,” according to the book’s subtitle.

Hagee’s situation is like that in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon. Ren reveals the History Eraser button, and Stimpy asks what will happen if someone presses it. Ren says, “That’s just it—we don’t know! Maybe something bad, maybe something good.” Likewise, Hagee doesn’t know what God is saying will happen—maybe something bad, maybe something good.

Perhaps the purpose of the book wasn’t to enlighten the flock but (dare I say it?) to make money. It turns out that Pastor Hagee wasn’t the first to think up the four blood moons idea, though you wouldn’t know it from his recent movie, where he claims to have come up with this connection. When there’s chum in the water, the sharks will come, and for Pastor Hagee, cash is chum.

Others have piled on and predicted financial disaster after the end of Shemitah (didn’t happen—the Dow was up on the next trading day). Unsurprisingly, those financial prophets didn’t conclude that their game is groundless. One pundit decided that God simply doesn’t want to make himself predictable. It’s clear that no lesson has been learned, and the next breathless, invented crisis is inevitable.

One element of this hysteria is a “the sky is falling” attitude. Prophecy-hungry Christians point to the bad news of the moment—the Iran nuclear deal, the progress of ISIS, Ebola, police shootings, droughts and forest fires, and same-sex marriage—and imagine that these are the signs of the End.

No, that’s not bad. You want bad? How about the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) that killed between three and eleven million people in Europe? That was bad. Or how about 1942–43 when it looked like the Axis powers might succeed and carve up the world? Or the 1918 flu pandemic that killed up to 100 million people? Or the Black Death in Europe (1346–53), which killed 20% of the world’s population?

Sorry, Christian apocalypticists, same-sex marriage doesn’t compare.

Remember when you were a kid in history class, and you asked why you had to learn all that stuff? This is why. It’s so you can be immune from people who are ignorant of the events like these—events so world-shakingly huge that they plausibly could have signaled an end of the world.

Consequences

I believe a quote from the Good Book is relevant here.

The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. (Deuteronomy 18:20)

Wow—that’s tough love. I imagine pastor David Berzins, who is eager to stone gays to death, would be happy to carry out that punishment if Hagee’s prophecies don’t come true.

Hagee has to walk a fine line. He must be specific enough to mesmerize his flock into buying his books and mailing in checks but not so specific that he could be easily called on a prophecy when it doesn’t come to pass. That was the error that Harold Camping made. He spent $100 million on advertising a very specific date for the Rapture, May 21, 2011. Things became uncomfortable when May 22 arrived just like any other day.

Hagee has been planning this for several years, and the last blood moon is just a day away. There must be a crescendo at his web site, right? No—we find as just one more ad in the lineup, “The final blood moon is coming … are you ready?”

Ready? Ready for what? Whatever happens, Hagee will declare victory and look for the chance to launch some new apocalyptic message so we can get good and scared all over again. John Hagee becomes Pastor Freddie Krueger of the (Nightmare on) Elm Street Church. Like the groundless claims in Pastor John Oliver’s recent and much-missed megachurch, Hagee’s far-reaching but empty claims are, incredibly, all legal.

If there were justice where you could pull a stunt like this once but then you’d lose all credibility, I wouldn’t mind. The problem is, there will be no consequences. While it will be amusing seeing Hagee and others tap dance away from their claims, no one will stone them. Their flock will continue to do what they’re told. Hagee has a new book out, and he’ll refocus on that. While I wonder how Hagee can live with himself, I think the whole thing will look like a smart financial move in hindsight.

What’s it like on the inside?

Captain Cassidy recently wrote about what it was like growing up as a Pentecostal teenager during the “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988” scare. On why this kind of thing is effective, she said that being on the inside flatters one’s ego. You know that you’ve got it figured out and the naysayers will get theirs soon enough, and then who’ll be laughing? Chillingly, she observed, “Fear lies at the heart of Christianity, not love.”

I’ll wrap up with this much-mended “The End is nigh!” sign envisioned by Kyle Hepworth. The End has been predicted more often than you may know.

John Hagee 4 blood moons

Christians who know that there’ve been other Rapture scares in the past
look at new Rapture scares like other folks look at lottery tickets:
sure, they’ve always failed to win in the past,
but this time might be the big payoff.
The problem is that their payoff happens for the worst reasons
and at the expense of those who disagree with them.
— Captain Cassidy