Sonata For Unaccompanied Atheist: Carrier's "Why I Am Not A Christian" - section 1

>> Richard Carrier's Why I Am Not A Christian

As I begin to respond to your RC comments I'm reminded why I just archived your response and didn't reply in the first place (which I admit was a little rude). I honestly couldn't think of anything to say that I haven't said before. But since you asked, here you go.

In the below I will summarize what I think his arguments are per section and respond to your comments per section.

SUMMARY INTRO

This essay is an attempt to explain why he doesn't believe in the Christian God. His basic method is to use a fairly non-controversial definition of Christianity then propose what sort of world you would expect given this sort of model. He then argues that the world predicted by this definition is different from what we actually observe. This is taken as evidence that the Christian hypothesis is untrue.

As a definition of Christianity he uses one proposed by CS Lewis in "Mere Christianity":

"mere Christianity" consist[s] in the belief that "there is one God" who "is quite definitely good or righteous," "who takes sides, who loves love and hates hatred, who wants us to behave in one way and not in another," and who "invented and made the universe." But this God also "thinks that a great many things have gone wrong" with the world and thus "insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again," and to this end arranged the death and resurrection of "His only Son," Jesus Christ, who is or embodies or represents the Creator, and can alone "save" us from "eternal death" if we now ask this Jesus to forgive our sins.

RC argues that the above fails as a hypothesis for the following 4 reasons: God is silent, God is inert, evidence is inadequate, and physical universe is different than we'd expect.

SUMMARY SECTION 1 God is silent (my summary plus some additional thoughts by me)

Because God loves us and wants the best for us and has unlimited resources then we should expect that he would make the rules of life completely clear to every person. Even we fallible humans have almost no trouble getting important points across to each other most of the time. The best communicator should have no problem making sure that we all have this information and realize its importance.

I think it is hard to argue that the information *is* clearly and unambiguously available to all. Competing claims of unique paths to the truth (different religions, different denominations) are allowed to flourish. Many people at many times in history didn't and don't have access to a bible not to mention the barrier of illiteracy. Compare this to the example of the apostle Paul who never met Jesus in the flesh but was given the good news directly. It's hard to imagine why every person ever wouldn't be given the same courtesy.

Attempts to explain the silence by the hypotheses that God wants to preserve our free will are non-starters. Giving people clear information and then giving them a choice happens all the time and doesn't strip them of free will. E.g. a doctor can give me clear info on how to take care of myself and I can choose how to use this info. Even if we were somehow able to resist God with our willfulness its unclear why a good God who loves us wouldn't overcome this stupid/willful part of us. E.g. a good lifeguard will fight a panicking drown victim if necessary.

For any reason you come up with to explain why God might appear to be silent but isn't really you need to ask your self is this reason supported by evidence or is it just an ad hoc idea that *if* true would explain the silence. You can't rescue an unsupported hypothesis by heaping on another unsupported hypothesis.

So for the everyday meaning of silent, God is silent. This contradicts what you would expect from a loving all powerful God who wants us to have important information on the most important aspect of life

---

[Your reply with my comments]

{{snip}}

You complain that he doesn't give any reasons for why he assumes God would be a certain way. It seems pretty clear that he's taking CS Lewis definition of Christianity as his basis. He then attempts to extrapolate what we would expect by using the normal meaning of love, goodness, etc. Everything I know about love and goodness comes from my interaction with people so it seems fair as a first attempt to use what I would expect of a good and loving person as a predictor of what we would expect of God. I played with this idea myself here. If you have evidence that good and loving means something different when applied to God than when applied to a person then you'll have to make your case for this. But there is a problem, I agree. If you talk to 10 Christians you'll get 11 definitions of Christianity so there is a pretty small chance he was going to agree with your definition of Christianity and prediction of God's behavior. While I think he makes a pretty good stab at taking CS Lewis's definition of Christianity seriously the problem is no one knows what God would do in any situation and what his true attributes are. That fact alone supports the point of this section.

{{snip}}

Your idea that God used to speak to us directly but stopped because we were rebellious needs to be supported somehow. You can't just state this is obviously true and expect that he should have addressed this.

{{snip}}

You assert that God gave us the bible. I'm curious to see your evidence for this. Also even if that's true the fact that people seem "hell-bent" on interpreting it in different ways from each other without access to an unambiguous way to verify interpretations seems to support the idea that God doesn't care if we get an accurate interpretation. You assert that God speaks to us by giving us a conscience. What is your evidence for this? You simply criticize his arguments by making unsupported assertions. This is not very convincing to me. Can you give me some evidence that God gave us a conscience and that this was intended as a message? You have to show both of these independently since one doesn't necessarily imply the other. Also you say that the majesty of creation speaks to us. Even if I accepted the idea that the majesty of nature implies God, what about the majesty of creation says Jesus rather than Vishnu? I mean if God wants us to know the truth then gives us imperfect information and imperfect truth detectors its hard to see how this supports the hypothesis that he loves us and wants us to know the truth.

{{snip}}

I'm glad you don't believe the "God wants to preserve our free will" argument since it's not a good one but it *is* very common so I think it was appropriate for him to address. But then you give a view of salvation that is so strange I'm not even sure how to respond to it. If I understand correctly you are saying that people are only saved by God overcoming their resistance. And no one can resist. So the implication is that God doesn't want some people to be saved. If that is true it hard to understand how this jives with God loving everyone. But even more importantly we need to establish the bible as having *any* authority to speak on the nature of God and salvation before it's even worth looking at this argument.

{{snip}}

To what ever extent RC is just "making up" things about how God works, it's hard to see how you are doing anything different. You are just saying that book x says that he's wrong. He is attempting a reductio ad absurdum so it's appropriate for him to start with CS Lewis' definition and see where that takes him. You on the other hand need to give some evidence that God is the way you say he is.

He definitely doesn't address your beliefs on salvation specifically but I think even you will admit that your beliefs are not exactly main stream Christianity so how could he even know to address your specific arguments? And just to reiterate, your arguments hold no weight until we establish the perfection of the bible.

And I guess I feel like I should point out that saying something *could* be true is not evidence that it is. Many apologist arguments seem to come down to: well it could be the case and you can't prove it's not. This of course says nothing about the actual truth of things.

The next response will address section two. As a quick aside I have to wonder why you find meaning in a universe where God chooses who gets salvation and who doesn't and overcomes their resistance or ignores them at his whim. Seems a lot like predestination and the negation of freewill. That's about as pointless a life as I can imagine, but this would be an interesting line to pursue at some point.

Sonata For Unaccompanied Atheist: Just Look

[snip]
>
> http://www.christian-thinktank.com/justlook.html
>
[snip]

The main gist seems to be that if you are open minded and honest (skeptical but fair) then you will see the truth. I agree. But there is a fairly large implication in this essay that there is a certain truth that you should see. If you don't come to the conclusion that Jesus is Lord then you weren't being honest and open minded. I didn't come to that conclusion and yet I believe and feel that I'm being open minded and honest as I know how. So you need to show me where I'm falling down. Certainly you can't argue that I'm not open minded and honest merely *because* I didn't reach that conclusion. You need instead to show that I'm not being open minded and not being honest independently of what conclusion you think I should have reached.

Here are some general thoughts I had while reading this essay, but I think my points in the previous email regarding what it would take for me to believe in Jesus covers many of his points already.

• I think there is a pretty good chance that the guy who wrote the original question to Glenn is being ironic or sarcastic. I can't prove this but it's a hunch. It would be interesting to see if Glenn's response did anything for him, but since there is no follow up I guess we'll never know.
  
  
• There is a running theme about how good kids are at discerning the truth and judging character and being open and honest investigators. I have to say I'm particularly amused by his example of a 3 or 4 year old and their open minded yet fair common sense about the world. As the proud owner of a 3 to 4 year old I can say that the last thing in the world I would trust is their powers of following evidence and being good judges of character. I spend a lot of time these days around little kids and it's hard to think of anyone who makes *worse* decisions about truth and human character. Unless someone stinks or is wearing a monster suit. They pick up on those clues pretty reliably. I can only imagine that you and Glenn so want Jesus's words about "come like a child" to be true that you would over look something so obvious. I could go on all day on this topic but the fact that all 3 and 4 year olds gladly take the religion of their parents (no matter what religion it is) should give you a little clue on this.
  
  Even if I *did* go along with the idea that they are good judges of character we would need to verify this somehow. People tend to remember the hits and forget the misses which is likely the source of this misconception about kids. I'll admit I could be wrong and I've somehow been around kids who don't have these infallible facilities for intuiting truth, but in any case we'd need an independent way to verify this.
  
  There is a good reason kids don't vote, write checks, or make adult decisions. Learning and experience are hard won attributes. Childlike innocence is almost always bad for dealing with reality. That's why parent's work so hard to protect them.
  
  Furthermore, the one good virtue that kids do have is asking question after question after question. They are very curious (just like me). If we want children to come as they are then we should also welcome the relentless questions as well. The problem with kids is that they are pretty bad at filtering out good answers from bad. As long as you phrase something as an answer they will usually accept it.
  
  
• If I claim that I was open minded and honest and came up with Zen Buddhism as "the answer" then you'd say I was wrong and start showing reasons and arguments, so I'm not even sure what the point of this essay is except to say that there is only one correct answer and any one who comes up with anything else is a liar or impure or closed mined, etc.
  
  
• Have you approached / tried out every religion on the planet with an open child like acceptance or a open minded skepticism? When did you assess Jainism for instance? Or Sufism? Don't you think that would be necessary before you affirm Christianity so strongly?
  
  
• It's a beautiful piece of propaganda to say that the good/pure/open minded can see something that the wise can't. How appealing it is to believe that you have an innate ability that is superior to the hard work and careful scholarship of the so called "wise". It's an especially good way to start an Emperor's New Clothes scam. In any case, if I just trust you then I'll never know. Perhaps you've been scammed and are just passing on your scammed beliefs. I won't know as long I just trust you.
  
  
• Apologists are always pointing out the wise atheists who've studied the word carefully and come to see it's truth. So should I be a trusting child or a demanding fact and logic driven scholar? Seems a bit contradictory to be both of these things. Being a child didn't work for these people either as I understand it.
  
  
• This essay is filled with lots of claims that require a belief that the Bible is true. For each of these you can assume my child like question why or how do you know?
  
  
• Almost everything in this essay could be used to support another belief system (except for specific Christian details).
  
  
  • ignore the skeptics and look for your self
  • be open minded
  • trust yourself
  • apparent contradictions can be explained
  • people gave their lives, were transformed,
  • etc
  
  
  
• If I go with the open minded skepticism and believing the best of people, why should I choose to examine Christianity first? And why should I stop there? How long should I spend with any one religion before I try the next?
  
  
  
  • Clearly most people in the world are really bad at picking the right religion let alone the right denomination
  • The whole reason we are having this conversation is because you think I have a bad spiritual sense. Why is reading the article going to change that?
  
  
  
• I do have "skeptical mind" but I'm not so sure I have skeptical heart
  
  
  • I actually believe most people in most religions are (mostly) doing their best and working hard to know the truth. That's why I have a huge mystery to solve. If I trust everyone to work hard to get the truth but everyone disagrees then clearly something is fundamentally wrong with the way most people approach religion.
    
    
  • I'm not sure how else to give the benefit of the doubt other than to have this conversation. If i had a closed heart would I even bother to talk to you about this stuff?
    
  
  
• "Christianity is most likely answer". Glenn suggests that if you have some obvious clues then you should take the most obvious explanation. I couldn't agree more. But:
  
  
  • he doesn't show that these clues are real
  • he doesn't show how it's the most likely explanation (e.g. what are all the different hypotheses (Judaism, Taoism atheism) and how is it better in which ways
    
    
  • the word obvious masks a lot of assumptions and possibilities for bias
  
  
  
• Going with your heart sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. That's why someone always has to do the dirty work and see just how good the heart is doing (e.g. careful, skeptical analysis of the evidence). Obviously you don't think any one in any other religion is doing this correctly or that I have. Just you and your team.
  
  
• Saying that God reveals himself in prophesies, beauty of nature complexity, etc sort of assumes what it's trying to show don't you think? And which God is it showing? What about the joy of family life points to Yahweh and not Shiva? I know many Indians with very happy family lives. And I know many Christians with crappy family lives.
  
  
• I totally agree with his reasonable doubt example. I just think there is more than enough reasons for reasonable doubt in the case of the Bible/Christianity:
  
  
  • The example he gives of convicting for a crime is obvious. No one in the world would disagree if things were so clear.
  • Best predictor of whether this is obvious to you is if you were born in a Christian country to a Christian family.
  • He merely states that Christianity is best explanation but doesn't make the actual case.
  • And just to be thorough we'd have to consider the possible but unlikely scenario that this was a very very clever frame job. Common sense will miss the actual occasional frame jobs. Innocent people go to jail sometimes and the guilty walk free sometimes so we need to factor that into the example if we are to be thoroughly honest.
  
  

Any way I think you get the picture.