William Lane Craig (WLC) has responded to my attack on faith statements (or “doctrinal statements”) in “A Call for Honesty in Christian Scholarship.” Begin with part 1 here.

Let’s conclude our response to WLC.

Bias? That’s not a problem. We’re all biased!

WLC has an interesting response to the problem of bias.

Finally, and most importantly, the allegation of bias is ultimately irrelevant. . . . Every historian approaches a topic with his biases and point of view. . . . As the history is supported by the weight of the evidence, the historian’s personal biases become irrelevant.

This is the “So what if I’m biased? Everyone’s biased!” argument. I guess I’m old-fashioned on this subject, because I’d like to think that bias isn’t binary (you’re biased or you’re not) but is measured on a scale, and we can and should strive to be as unbiased as possible.

The point can be generalized. We all have our biases, including atheists. (If Christian scholars need to attach a disclaimer to their work, so do atheists!)

When I subordinate myself to an unchanging statement, I’ll do just that. Until then, I’m free to reach any conclusion the evidence leads me to, and I only have fear of embarrassment keeping me from changing. No job rides on this. The situation for the professional Christian scholar is quite different.

I agree with WLC on a point

WLC does make one important point, so let me take the opportunity to clarify my position. WLC said:

But our work is to be judged by the soundness of our arguments, not by our biases. So you’ll never find me dismissing the work of an atheist philosopher on the grounds that he is biased, even though it may be blatantly obvious. Rather I seek to expose the fallacy in his reasoning or the false or unjustified premiss in his argument.

So the answer to your question, How do we know if the work of a Christian scholar is to be trusted? is easy: you assess it by the arguments and evidence he offers in support of his conclusions. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.

Yes, it would be an ad hominem fallacy to reject the work out of hand solely because it came from a Christian scholar. “That article came from a Christian scholar bound by a doctrinal statement; therefore, it’s crap” would be an example of this error.

Here’s what I’m saying.

1. Christian institutions do themselves no favors with doctrinal statements because they put a cloud of doubt over their scholars’ work. Signing such a statement binds the scholars to never reach a contrary conclusion on any of its points of dogma. They can never agree with one of those points without our dismissing the work as an inevitable conclusion rather than the result of honest research. It’s a disservice to the scholars, and it’s a disservice to their work.

2. WLC is right that I can analyze the arguments in an article and judge for myself, but this is my only option. I can’t accept or reject the conclusion without that analysis because the doctrinal statement means the author has no inherent reputation.

3. Nonexpert readers will often be unable to do the analysis. Let me illustrate with an example. I recently had lunch with three Christians from the local Reasons to Believe chapter (RTB is an old-earth Creationist group). We were talking about whether Daniel accurately prophesied Jesus (it didn’t). I summarized the evidence that Daniel was written in the 160s BCE. One of my antagonists replied that that was impossible since the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) was written around 300 BCE. How could Daniel have been written in the 160s if it was included in the Septuagint? The answer, which I had to research afterwards to find out, is that only the Pentateuch (the first five books) were included in the original Septuagint.

Expert readers might be able to provide the devil’s advocate challenges to test the work, as WLC suggests, but not all readers are experts. WLC’s response becomes, “So you think that their conclusion is flawed? Prove it!” but that’s an unreasonable burden on the reader and a handicap to the author’s reputation.

4. This option isn’t available beyond a single paper. Take this recent headline as an example: “12 Historical Facts About The Resurrection Of Jesus Most Scholars Agree Upon.” Are these “scholars” bound by doctrinal statements? WLC’s solution would be to just read their work and evaluate it, but that’s not available to us when there’s an appeal to the consensus of an entire discipline as in this case. If these scholars are constrained in their work, this statement about consensus is meaningless.

Academic freedom at a Christian college

WLC brings up Ivy League schools as exemplars but never addresses the elephant in the room: that they don’t use doctrinal statements. Indeed, they are world class institutions in part because they don’t use them. Doctrinal statements are incompatible with free inquiry.

WLC is a professor at Biola’s Talbot School of Theology, and Talbot gets its accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS). This makes Talbot answerable to the ATS policy guidelines on “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” While this policy accepts doctrinal statements (“specific confessional adherence”), it also demands, “No confessional standard obviates the requirement for responsible liberty of conscience in the Jewish or the Christian community or the practice of the highest ideals of academic freedom.”

It also requires tenure. “The provision for appointment on indefinite tenure is one way in which institutions safeguard their faculties’ freedom to teach, to inquire, and to organize their academic programs.”

Given that this is an accreditation association for theology schools, there are presumably interpretations or loopholes that allow binding doctrinal statements. Nevertheless, this is a lot more respect for academic freedom than WLC seemed interested in defending or even acknowledging.

Conclusion

Freedom to change one’s mind is an essential right in any institution. It’s a foundational concept in the academic freedom that reigns in the Ivy League colleges that WLC himself admires.

WLC’s unhelpful response is to say that it doesn’t bother him that there are constraints. They don’t get in his way. He doesn’t need to change his mind. But if they hobble your life . . . well then it sucks to be you.

I can perhaps see WLC’s position. He is part of a church in which a perfect God made a clear statement of his unchanging rules that unaccountably is so ambiguous that new Christian denominations are splintering off at a rate of two per day. The doctrinal statement could be his finger in the dike, though that’s a futile gesture when he wants to simultaneously carve out a safe space for Christian thought while polishing Christianity’s image as a field able to hold its own in the marketplace of ideas.

He can’t have both.

The Bible:
The Goatherder’s Guide to the Universe
— Seth Andrews

 Image credit: Greger Ravik, flickr, CC

William Lane Craig (WLC) has responded to my attack on faith statements (or “doctrinal statements”) in “A Call for Honesty in Christian Scholarship.” See part 1 for WLC’s claim that they help create community.

Let’s continue with more of WLC’s concerns.

Cause and effect

WLC moves on to misunderstand the problem. He says that a doctrinal statement doesn’t determine a scholar’s views; rather, scholars will have formed their views beforehand and only then seek an institution that fits with their views.

That’s correct, as far as it goes. When you join, the doctrinal statement fits you like a just-right sweater since you picked an institution that shared your views. The problem comes when you change, and the sweater then becomes a straightjacket.

WLC is confident that this won’t be a problem—for him, at least:

Thus, it is naïve on your part to imagine that [Houston Baptist University’s] doctrinal statement, for example, imposes some sort of restraint upon me with respect to belief in the virgin birth or the deity of Christ or the resurrection of Jesus. I held these beliefs long before affiliating with HBU, and I would believe them no matter where I taught.

Craig tells us that if he hasn’t felt constrained by a doctrinal statement, then it’s all good.

But he isn’t completely clueless, and he can imagine the problem—though his solution is rather harsh.

It can happen that one’s doctrinal views can change in the course of one’s career, with the result that one can no longer sign the doctrinal statement in good faith. In that case, the professor should seek employment elsewhere.

Oh, so it’s as easy as that? If you’ve grown so that you can’t accept the outmoded doctrinal statement, just quit.

This gets back to the original problem. Sure, you can quit your job. Maybe you’ll lose your tenure or even your career, depending on how far your views have changed. But you might have other obligations than that to the university. Can you quit if there’s a family to feed? Or do you convince yourself to muddle through by not thinking about the problem much?

We can humanize this issue by moving from an abstract hypothetical to the concrete problems of hundreds of actual Christian clergy with failing faith by looking at the Clergy Project. Some of these clergy members have walked away from their careers in the church as atheists, while others keep their head down as long as they can, preferring an uncomfortable present to an unknown future.

WLC seems to appreciate the problem, but Christian compassion isn’t where he goes for an answer:

The danger is that because such a move can be so gut-wrenching, the professor may be tempted to continue in his present position, even though he no longer believes the doctrinal statement. In that case, he compromises his own integrity and the integrity of the institution. If the institution does not take the difficult step of dismissing him, the seed of corruption is planted which may derail the institution in coming generations.

In other words, it’s the scholar’s fault that the straightjacket is too tight. I’m sure that’s comforting.

And “the seed of corruption”? Really? Christian scholars’ views are so uncompromising that they can’t tolerate any challenges?

People change. Doctrinal statements are too brittle to accept this, but this is the fault of the institutions that demand them, not that of the people.

Consequences of a doctrinal statement

It is false, then, as you allege, that by signing a doctrinal statement [that includes the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin], “a professor has publicly stated, ‘I promise to never conclude that the virgin birth was just a myth’.” He has made no such promise.

He has. Your point is simply that he can break his promise. Yes, he can, but the original point stands: we can’t treat his conclusions at his Christian college as useful new information when he was bound to reach them. (I clarify this statement in part 3 below.)

You say that he can just quit? Sure, but why have this cumbersome and punitive policy? Harvard isn’t bothered by what its scholars conclude. What does it say that Harvard’s view of academic freedom wouldn’t tolerate doctrinal statements?

Mike Licona’s crime

In my original post, I discussed one cautionary tale: “Might the scholar simply have come to an unbiased conclusion? That’s possible, but how would we know? Mike Licona is a Christian scholar who found out the hard way that faith statements have teeth. In 2011, he lost two jobs because, in a 700-page book, he questioned the inerrancy of a single Bible verse.” WLC responded:

The case of Mike Licona is a good example. Licona has never denied biblical inerrancy, nor was he fired because of it.

The point about Licona is that he’s an example of someone who ran afoul of a doctrinal statement and lost his job. I don’t want to split hairs over the theological validity of the charges against him, but let me respond to the two points WLC made.

In one of his public attacks on Licona at the time, Norm Geisler wrote an article titled, “Mike Licona on Inerrancy: It’s Worse than We Originally Thought.” You’re free to disagree with Geisler’s conclusion, but, yeah, it’s about inerrancy.

And I didn’t say that Licona was fired from his jobs, just that he lost them.

WLC’s point was to vaguely defend Licona against the charges and note that he’s still “a member in good standing of the Evangelical Theological Society.” That’s nice, but it still turned the guy’s life upside down. Can he still want to ignore the collateral damage of faith statements?

I agree with WLC on one important point in the conclusion in part 3. 

All those who persistently reject Jesus Christ in the present life
shall be raised from the dead and throughout eternity
exist in the state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish.
— Biola doctrinal statement that WLC has signed

Image credit: Kimberly Vardeman, flickr, CC

Hey—don’t blame me. I’d stop listing stupid arguments if Christians would stop making them.

The discussion of these arguments begins here (go to the appendix at that post for a list of all these arguments to date).

Stupid argument #44: Time’s up! Now answer all the fundamental questions of science.

To illustrate this stupid argument, here are comments by popular apologist J. Warner Wallace (audio interview @ 20:30). When an atheist, he says, he wondered if he was justified in believing “that everything in the universe could be accounted for with nothing more than just space, time, matter, and the laws of physics and chemistry—because that’s all I would have to work with if atheism was true.” I guess he was an inquisitive guy, because he had a lot on his mind:

Does that explain the universe the way we see it? Can it explain the beginning of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe, can it explain the origin of life or the appearance of design in biology, can it explain consciousness or free agency or objective transcendent moral truths? Everyone has to explain evil, whether you’re a theist or a nontheist. These are the things that everyone has a burden to explain.

Let’s first clear away the smoke to see what is actually being argued here. The universe began with the Big Bang, though I imagine his question is what caused that. Fine tuning of constants in the universe is curious, though not much of an argument for God (discussed here and here). The origin of life (abiogenesis) is indeed a puzzle, though too much is made of the appearance of design, which is neatly explained by evolution. Science does have questions about consciousness, though there’s no evidence of objective morality (see here and here). And the Problem of Evil asks why a good god allows bad things to happen. Atheists don’t propose a god, so this is precisely a problem for Christians.

So what’s left? The cause of the Big Bang and abiogenesis are important research areas, with consciousness and perhaps free will as additional challenges. After dismissing the tangential issues, we’re left with the observation that science has questions to answer. That’s true. And obvious. Why then the long list of questions? Because it sounds stupid to come right out and say, “There will always be questions within science, but ‘God did it’ can explain them all; therefore, God.”

Wallace demands, “These are the things that everyone has a burden to explain,” but his sense of urgency is groundless. Yes, there are unanswered questions, but so what?

[Then I examined] the universe from the perspective of my philosophical naturalism to see if my atheism had any explanatory power.

Sure it does, just not in the field of science. While the Christian claim “God did it” has no evidence backing it and is unfalsifiable (and therefore useless as an explanation), the hypothesis “there is no god” does follow the evidence and neatly untangles the tough problems that tie Christians in knots (more here).

[I already accepted] several extra-natural explanations as an atheist, because if nature is just space, time, matter, and physics, well there’s lots of things that those things won’t account for, and so I’ve got to step out of my naturalism just to explain those things and so what am I doing here?

Time’s up—I need the answers now! No, I’m sorry, “Science is working on it” will not be accepted as an answer. You must completely explain all remaining scientific questions right now.

Or at least that’s how apologists like Wallace imagine things. For some reason, we shouldn’t look for further progress from the discipline that has given us our modern technology-intensive world. No, we should rely on the discipline that weaves contradictory stories about the supernatural, that has no use for evidence, and that has never taught us anything accurate about reality.

See also: Christianity’s Bogus Claims to Answer Life’s Big Questions

Stupid argument #45: Well, aren’t you arrogant! Who are you to judge God?

Here’s a comment from this blog that illustrates the popular Christian idea that we mortals are in no position to judge God’s actions.

I am completely clueless as to what you think could possibly give you the right to Judge God. Unlike you, God knows all things and He brought the universe into existence for a reason. You don’t have to like it that God created people knowing they would end up in hell, or suffer on earth, or be blessed for a while, or whatever it might be. But what right do they have to look into the infinite heavens, raise their fist, and bring a righteous charge against the infinite God of the universe?

The first problem, of course, is the Hypothetical God Fallacy (Stupid Argument #33). You don’t just assume the incredible Christian claims and proceed from there, but that is the assumption behind the claim, “Who are you to judge God?”

If we don’t assume God, which is the only reasonable option for an outsider to Christianity, then we’re not judging God but judging claims about God. No believer can ask anything more from us than that we evaluate their supernatural claims. What’s the alternative? To simply accept Christians’ claims about God? No, the buck stops here, and we’re the ones to judge.

The problem is that the Christian claims suck. The Christian is usually eager to judge God but only when the conclusion would be “God is good.” When a negative conclusion is possible, they tell us that no one can judge God.

And with the biblical God, a negative conclusion is inevitable. A god who is all-loving but commands genocide and sanctions slavery? A god who is eager for a relationship but won’t provide evidence of his existence? A god who is just and fair but demands belief in the unbelievable to get into paradise? Nope—that’s not a good God (more).

Christians seem to want to treat God like a celestial baby. With a human baby, people excuse its messes since it doesn’t know better, but then that’s how they treat God as well. When someone wants to judge God’s actions by adult standards—nothing difficult, just basic morality—these Christians step in and say that that’s not fair. God can’t do wrong, by definition. If he does something that would be wrong if you did it, we’re just supposed to call that “right” since it’s God who did it.

Like the baby who needs a diaper, God can’t even defend himself. What does it say that Christians treat God like a baby? And that they demand that we avoid judging his actions?

Continued in part 15.

Of the two great, evil, criminal gangs to emerge out of Italy,
why is the Mafia the one that gets most of the bad press?
— RichardSRussell

Image credit: Mark, flickr, CC

This is a guest post by a long-time commenter at this blog, Richard S. Russell. Richard is a retired research analyst (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction) and long-time activist in the realms of atheism, science fiction, and liberal politics. He has more opinions than any ten people should legally be allowed to have but makes up for it by giving them away as fast as possible. He blogs irregularly at richardsrussell.blogspot.com.

For years, CNN.com published essays on what they called their Belief Blog — something to do with religion and occasionally atheism. And I’d often join other atheists in the comment section as we pointed out the many, many flaws, fallacies, and outright lies in the cases the religionists are trying to make. I in particular often favored humor in my observations, but I’m hardly alone in that regard. And this has led any number of religionists to whine that we have no respect for them or their faith, and that we’re just mean to poke fun at them.

I don’t deny that I derive a certain glee in doing so, but I submit that it’s a perfectly normal, utterly human reaction, in defense of which I offer up one of Jesus’s favorite tactics …

= = = = = =  T H E   P A R A B L E  = = = = = =

You’re sitting around your favorite table at the corner tavern with the usual gang, when your friend Norm comes in, all excited.

“Norm, where ya been, buddy?”

“Guys, you’re not gonna believe this, but I swear it’s true, every word of it. I was just leaving the house and heading for my car when I heard voices coming from my back yard. That was strange, so I went around back to see what it was. And you’ll never believe what I saw.”

“So don’t keep us in suspenders, what was it?”

“It was a leprechaun. And he was talking to the Easter Bunny. Not exactly talking, they seemed to be arguing, but they were using some language I couldn’t understand. Loud, though, that’s why I heard them all the way around the front of the house.”

Some sniggering, but Bob down at the end of the table rises to the bait. “Easter Bunny, huh? How do you know it was the Easter Bunny and not just a regular rabbit?”

Norm shoots the questioner a reproachful look. “Because he was 6 feet tall and wearing a polka-dot vest. And talking! OK? And while I was just standing there goggling, the leprechaun reaches behind his ear and pulls out a big gold coin and just throws it at the bunny, like he’s really mad or something.”

“Oh, do go on!”

“Well, I kind of slid into the shadows, hoping they wouldn’t see me, and just then the flying saucer shows up.”

“Flying saucer, eh? We’ll probably get lots of coverage of that on the news tonight, then?”

“No, probably not, because it was only about the size of my hand when it appeared. I didn’t even see it coming, it just settled down on the lawn out of the sky. And then it suddenly just grew, right before my eyes. Got about as big as my garage. And then …”

“Yeah, then a little green man came out, right?”

“Will you please shut up and let me tell it? I was there, and you weren’t! Yes, he was little and had those big almond-shaped eyes you always see in the movies, but he wasn’t green, more grayish. And only 3 fingers on each hand. And he didn’t say anything but he kept waving his arm at the other 2, trying to get them on board the saucer.”

“And did they go?”

“The leprechaun did. Right away. Just scooted in past the space alien. But the bunny didn’t look like he wanted to, and you could tell that the little green man, I mean gray man, was getting irritated, because he waved harder and stamped his foot. Finally the Easter Bunny hopped on up the ramp and got on. Had to duck a bit to get through the doorway.”

“Norm, if you think …”

“Will you wait a minute? Then the opening in the side of the ship just closed up, the saucer shrank back down to about hand size again and took off straight up, faster than I’ve ever seen anything move. It was out of sight in about 10 seconds. So that’s what happened and why I’m late.”

And everybody else just looks at each other and then busts out laughing. Norm is miffed. “I’m telling you, that’s exactly what happened!”

“Norm, my friend, we are just simple everyday working guys. Our drug of choice is beer. What on Earth have you been smoking?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all! Haven’t had a drop to drink, either. I’m stone-cold sober.”

“Been doing a little experimental cooking with mushrooms, then, have you?”

“No! I’m telling you that’s exactly what happened. God’s honest truth. Would I lie to you?”

A round of nods and a chorus of “Oh, yeah!”s, and Norm gets really pissed and stomps off.

= = = = = =  T H E   E N D  = = = = = =

OK, be honest, now. You would’ve made sport of Norm, too, wouldn’t you? What an incredible crock! He’s practically begging for scorn and ridicule.

And if, in the coming days and months, Norm stuck to his guns and continued to insist that his account was true, despite lack of any evidence whatsoever, you’d eventually fear that your buddy had suffered some kind of psychotic break and start urging him to seek professional help.

But at least Norm had the advantage of claiming first-hand, personal, eyewitness experience. And, no matter how far-fetched his tale, it didn’t contain any outright impossibilities. How much crazier do you have to be to solemnly subscribe to the even more incredible BS from the Bible, all of which (supposedly) happened 2,000 years ago and is attested to only by 4 pseudonymous authors, otherwise unknown to history, who didn’t even live thru the events they wrote about?

And you religionists wonder why we jeer, scoff, roll our eyes, and poke fun at you. Put yourselves in our position, and imagine the self-restraint we have to use to hold it down to only that. The only reason we take you at all seriously is because you wield political power and have historically shown that you’re perfectly willing to barbecue people like us for pointing out your idiocies, so you’re not merely pathetically funny, you’re irrationally dangerous.

People who don’t want you to laugh at their beliefs
shouldn’t believe such funny things.
— Anonymous

Have you heard of the Drake equation? It’s a simple product of seven values, and it attempts to compute the number of civilizations in our galaxy with whom radio communication might be possible.

Now that we have found clear evidence of planets around other stars, the equation is slightly more practical than when it was first proposed over a half-century ago, but it still demands reliable figures for factors we can now only guess at: the fraction of planets in the average solar system that could potentially support life, the fraction of those that produce life, that continue on to develop intelligent life, whose intelligent life develops technology, and so on.

How likely is God?

We have a similar problem when we evaluate the claims of Christianity.

Physicist Stephen Unwin wrote The Probability of God (2004) and, yes, he proposes to compute the likelihood that God exists. He uses Bayes’ theorem (I wrote an introduction to Bayes’ theorem here). You can take his equation below as a given, or you can see how it is derived from a more conventional form of Bayes’ theorem in the appendix. You’ll soon see that the interesting part isn’t the math but the assumptions that Unwin makes.

We start with a beginning probability of God’s existence, P_before. Use a scaling factor D—Unwin’s “divine indicator,” which is a measure of the likelihood of God given certain evidence—we compute P_after. Unwin uses values of D from 10 (given a particular bit of evidence, God is much more likely to exist than not) to 0.1 (given this evidence, God is much less likely to exist).

Once he has a new probability P_after, he uses that value as his new P_before and repeats the computation with another value of D, reflecting the likelihood of God given another piece of evidence. The computation is quite simple. The unreliable part, as with the Drake equation, is determining the probabilities.

Unwinding Unwin

We need an initial probability—the likelihood of God given no evidence. Unwin uses P_before = 0.5 and calls this “maximum ignorance.”

His first bit of evidence is evidence for human goodness. For this, he uses D = 10 (God is much likelier given that human goodness exists). Plug in the numbers, and the equation gives P_after = 0.91. The equation simply provides a way to merge these different factors into a single probability for God. Here are his six factors with their associated D values:

• Human goodness, such as altruism (D = 10)
• Existence of moral evil—that is, evil done by humans (D = 0.5)
• Existence of natural evil such as natural disasters (D = 0.1)
• Minor miracles such as answered prayers (D = 2)
• Major miracles that break the rules—a dead person brought back to life, for example (D = 1)
• Evidence of religious experience such as feelings of awe (D = 2)

And after all that, the probability of God is 0.67. God is likelier to exist than not.

It’s math! How you gonna disagree with that?

(Let me note that I haven’t read Unwin’s book but instead have relied on helpful critiques by Vic Stenger and The Friendly Atheist.)

I take exception to Unwin’s assumptions. First, let’s revisit our starting probability about God. Does Zeus exist? Thor? Osiris? Shiva? Quetzalcoatl? If the answer is “Are you serious? Of course not!” then why do we start with a 0.5 probability for Yahweh, especially when he looks like just another Canaanite god?

If Unwin wants to dismiss this information at the starting gate, I can accept that. But then let’s add it in as a new factor:

• Humans have a passion for inventing supernatural gods. Believers make contradictory claims, so most of these claims must be false. Yahweh looks like just one invented god. (D = .001)

Next, let’s reevaluate Unwin’s six factors.

• Goodness: Altruism exists in humans. This isn’t surprising since we’re social animals. Evolution has selected us with an innate sense of the Golden Rule. The Christian view also explains good traits in humans, so this gives no preference either way. (D = 1)
• Moral evil: Humans do terrible things sometimes, and the natural explanation has no trouble with this. But Man made in God’s image with an innate sense of God’s existence? The popular free will defense fails. No, this Christian claim maps poorly to the unpleasant reality. (D = 0.01)
• Natural evil: Indiscriminate killers like natural disasters, disease, and other calamities—things that an omnipotent God could eliminate—are hard for Christianity to explain. Birth defects and other gratuitous evil compound the problem. (D = 0.0001)
• Miracles: The Bible says, “Ask and ye shall receive,” but prayers aren’t answered the way the Bible promises, not even the selfless ones. Coincidences abound, but we have little besides wishful thinking to imagine that they are the work of God. (D = 0.001)
• Rule-breaking miracles: Jesus promised, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these,” but science knows of zero amputated limbs that have grown back or dead people supernaturally returned to life. Surely there have been millions of earnest prayers for these, but they have been unanswered. (D = 0.0001)
• Religious experience: We feel awe in response to both natural realities and supernatural claims. (D = 1)

The probability is now down to 10^–16, but we’re just getting started. There are lots more uncomfortable facts about Christianity.

Piling on: more factors to consider

• Despite much searching, science acknowledges zero examples of the supernatural—not ghosts, not speaking to the dead, not the afterlife, and not religious claims. (D = 0.01)
• Historians scrub supernatural claims from History, which means that the Bible is unreliable (and leaves little besides tradition as the foundation for Christianity). (D = 0.1)
• Christianity is just a tradition and can’t be deduced from objective facts about nature. (D = 0.1)
• God is functionally nonexistent. (D = 0.01)
• Our reality looks like a reality with no gods. (D = 0.01)
• Though God is said to desperately want a personal relationship with us, he remains hidden and faith is demanded. This is precisely what you’d expect if God were nonexistent. (D = 0.0001)
• The Bible itself treats God as if he’s just another invented god. (D = 0.01)
• The Bible reveals no special information that wasn’t common knowledge to people of the time. (D = 0.01)
• Believers tend to reflect their culture; that is, a predominantly Muslim culture will produce children that will likely grow up to be Muslim, and so on for other religions. (D = 0.01)
• Religion depends on indoctrinating children before they are old enough to be skeptical. (D = 0.01)
• The Bible looks like the tedious blog of an ancient tribe, not the simple, unambiguous, and short document that an actual omniscient god would produce. (D = 0.01)

The probability of God is now basically zero (10^–38 if you’re keeping score at home).

The apologist might demand equal time for the Transcendental Argument, the Design Argument, the Moral Argument, and so on. I don’t think they get out of the gate (click on the links for more).

The underlying problem with Unwin’s argument is that different people will weigh the factors differently. Clues for God’s existence aren’t unambiguous. I’m sure you thought that at least some of my numbers above were off, and you may have thought of other facts that have been overlooked. Nevertheless, the attempt to make the God question quantitative, interesting though it may be, seems hopeless.

The subtitle of Unwin’s book is A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth. Yes, it’s a simple calculation, but no, it doesn’t prove God. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

All Westboro [Baptist Church] was 
was evangelical Christianity minus polite behavior.
— Frank Shaeffer interview on Point of Inquiry

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 04/09/14.)

Photo credit: Andy Melton, flickr, CC

Appendix:

Bayes’ theorem is easy to understand visually by using a probability tree. See my introductory post for a discussion of that. It’s less easy to understand (for me, anyway) through equations.

Here’s the derivation of the equation used by Unwin, starting with Bayes’ theorem. We’re computing P(G | E), the probability (P) of God existing (G) given (|) the evidence (E). Bayes’ theorem says:

where P(~G) is the probability of God not existing. Define D as follows:

D is Unwin’s “divine indicator,” the scaling factor that represents how likely the evidence E would be if God existed rather than God not existing. Now multiply top and bottom of Bayes’ equation by 1/P(E | ~G):

Since P(~G) = 1 – P(G),

Or, using the terminology of Unwin:

At first glance, faith statements seem reasonable. There’s plenty to criticize, but let’s first see them from the standpoint of the Christian organizations that use them.

What’s a faith statement?

Faith statements are declarations like these.

• “The mission of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is to advance the understanding that human beings and nature are the result of intelligent design rather than a blind and undirected process.”
• A fragment from the faith statement of Houston Baptist University: “[Those connected with HBU must believe] that man was directly created by God, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as the Son of God, [and] that He died for the sins of all men and thereafter arose from the grave.”
• A fragment from Answers in Genesis: “By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”

There are lots of interpretations of Christianity. If you want to donate to a Christian organization, you need to see if their beliefs line up with yours. The faith statement helps make that evaluation.

Academic freedom and conflicts of interest

Faith statements are good for donors, but they’re bad for the institutions that have them. A faith statement is a commitment to a conclusion. By accepting the conclusion beforehand, institutions governed by them forfeit their ability to defend or even comment on the points in those statements.

When a scholar from HBU concludes that the virgin birth is history rather than mythology, why believe it? That’s just the faith statement talking. The same is true when the Discovery Institute reports that intelligent design beats evolution or Answers in Genesis argues for a 6000-year-old earth.

Might the scholar simply have come to an unbiased conclusion? That’s possible, but how would we know? Mike Licona is a Christian scholar who found out the hard way that faith statements have teeth. In 2011, he lost two jobs because, in a 700-page book, he questioned the inerrancy of a single Bible verse (more here).

There is a stick raised above these Christian scholars that demands that they toe the line or else. With some conclusions predetermined to be correct and others incorrect, how do we know that their work is an honest search for the truth? We don’t, and indeed the work of every Christian scholar constrained by a faith statement is suspect.

By committing to the faith statement, they are ruling out certain conclusions before they’ve done any research. For example, the HBU statement says Jesus was born of a virgin. By signing that statement, a professor is publicly stating (among other things), “I promise to never conclude that the virgin birth was just a myth.”

Accepting and rejecting claims because of dogma rather than science got the Church into an embarrassing situation when it rejected Galileo’s heliocentric solar system. They only publicly retracted their error in 1992.

There are close to a thousand religiously affiliated U.S. colleges and universities plus many more ministries that make intellectual claims. The cloud of scholarly untrustworthiness hangs over a lot of Christians.

How things work in the real world: disclosure

Faith statements are a restriction on academic freedom according to The American Association of University Professors. But that’s not enough. In other areas of intellectual discourse, this constraint would be disclosed. Many medical journals have policies that demand that authors disclose conflicts of interest. The same is true for science journals (source). The American Historical Association’s “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct” calls for historians to disclose any research assistance that could bias their conclusions.

Journalists are careful to avoid not only conflicts of interest but even the appearance of such conflicts. You’ve probably seen articles with an aside such as, “Full disclosure: I have a close relative who works for the company that is the subject of this article.”

The equivalent in judicial, legal, or governmental fields is called recusal—abstaining from participation in an issue that would cause a conflict of interest.

Does it matter when research about climate change is funded by a fossil fuel company rather than Greenpeace? Does it matter when research about smoking is funded by the Tobacco Institute rather than the National Institutes of Health? Does it matter when research about gun violence is funded by the National Rifle Association rather than the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence?

Just because research is funded by an organization with an interest in the result doesn’t mean that the research is flawed. The point is simply that that all potential biases should be made public.

Carry this thinking into Christian scholarship. Every blog post, journal article, book, or lecture from a Christian scholar constrained by a faith statement should have that faith statement disclosed.

The parallel world of Christian scholarship

Christian scholars seem to admire the respect given to fields like journalism, medicine, science, and so on. But rather than earning that respect the old-fashioned way, Christian scholarship creates a parallel world with training wheels.

Creationists can’t get published in Nature or Scientific American? No problem—Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis has created its own “peer-reviewed journal,” Answers Research Journal. The problem is that this is a journal constrained by yet another faith statement. The author submission guidelines make clear that any paper will be rejected if it “conflicts with the best interests of [Answers in Genesis] as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith.”

Christian colleges can teach whatever they want and call it “science.” Their religious shibboleth for science make it noteworthy when they teach evolution—that is, when they teach actual science.

They give themselves the right to domesticate science to avoid anything that steps on their theological toes and have their own science-y books, conferences, and home schooling curriculum.

But their parallel world is just a play table with clay and crayons. They only dream that they’re sitting at the adult table. Christian scholarship has sold its soul.

Here’s the cause and effect relationship. Donations power the Christian machine, and they don’t happen without a faith statement; a faith statement means that any “scholarship” is suspect; poor scholarship means that Christian scholars can’t play with the big boys; and that leads to their parallel Christian world with a low bar that they can cross.

Correcting the problem

With this article, I’m calling on Christian scholars to, as a first step toward legitimacy, disclose faith statements they’re bound by. Not admitting to a faith statement that prevents honest research is to break the ninth commandment against lying. Unfortunately, any who read this will ignore it because to do otherwise would risk breaking the spell. It would call attention to a weakness.

What’s surprising is that they will ignore it without embarrassment. They don’t need to whisper about damage control among themselves. They can publicly use the word “recant” when demanding that an errant scholar return to the fold, unconcerned about how that makes them very unlike the scientists, historians, and the other conventional scholars they admire. That was the word used with Mike Licona, the Christian scholar called to account (above). They used “recant” four centuries ago for Galileo; why not for Licona now?

But times are changing. In the time of Galileo, the church wasn’t questioned in the West. They held the intellectual high ground. That’s no longer true, and I expect that the need for credibility will increasingly conflict with the need for donations. Ignoring conflicts of interest and doing “scholarship” with Christian training wheels will become less acceptable.

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

Image credit: Denise Krebs, flickr, CC