A couple of days back, we saw where Cornelius Hunter put up one of his dual post comments here at UD; on the recent proposal to set up a Darwin Day celebration. In glancing at the commentary at his personal blog, I came across the following highly revealing exchange involving one of the most virulent objectors against UD, from here on:
N: [cites T] “but not okay to name a day after someone who actually lived,…”
[Responds:] I hope by this statement you aren’t implying Christ never existed.
Later, we find this comeback:
T: [Cites N] “I hope by this statement you aren’t implying Christ never existed.”
[Comments:] Can you provide any evidence that “Jesus Christ” ever existed? And no, the fairy tales in the bible aren’t evidence.
This is of course yet another example of the dismissive pattern of argument that is so familiar from today’s New Atheists and many objectors to the Design inference pattern of reasoning.
A more prominent example comes from Mr Dawkins’ recent September 2012 Playboy Magazine interview that has been remarked on previously:
DAWKINS: I haven’t read it all, but my knowledge of the Bible is a lot better than most fundamentalist Christians’. (HT: UD News)
This is a slightly more subtle form of the argument, but it is fundamentally the same.
The underlying rhetorical structure typically starts with Cliffordian Evidentialism, in the Sagan form:
Extraordinary [to me!] claims require extraordinary [Nope: ADEQUATE] evidence!
The tendency is then to slide down the slippery slope, to the brazenly confident dismissive assertion:
There is no evidence [contrary to what I wish to be so]!
Then, the demand becomes:
You have to PROVE to me that . . . !
The chain of fallacies should be fairly obvious, but it is worth the while to take the case that has so excited both T and Mr Dawkins, to bring out the underlying problem of selective hyperskepticism leading on to willfully closed minded, willfully obtuse dismissal of evidence that should be taken seriously.
Let us start with the Ancient Documents rule that was so aptly summarised by a founding father of the modern anglophone jurisprudential school of evidence, Simon Greenleaf:
Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forgery, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. [Testimony of the Evangelists, 1995 reprint, p.16.]
The relevant evidence on chain of custody of the NT can be summarised, by adapting a chart from McDowell and Williams, in He Walked Among Us (1993) — free for download here :
In addition, in his Is the New Testament History, Allen Barnett observed that by the time of the first three writing church fathers c. 96 – 115 AD — Clement of Rome, and Polycarp — twenty-five of the twenty seven NT documents familiar to us were already being cited as authoritative and accurate. (Two of the shortest epistles are the exceptions.)
He also summarises:
On the basis of . . . non-Christian sources [i.e. Tacitus (Annals, on the fire in Rome, AD 64; written ~ AD 115), Rabbi Eliezer (~ 90’s AD; cited J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1929), p. 34), Pliny (Letters to Trajan from Bithynia, ~ AD 112), Josephus (Antiquities, ~ 90’s)] it is possible to draw the following conclusions:
- Jesus Christ was executed (by crucifixion?) in Judaea during the period where Tiberius was Emperor (AD 14 – 37) and Pontius Pilate was Governor (AD 26 – 36). [Tacitus]
- The movement spread from Judaea to Rome. [Tacitus]
- Jesus claimed to be God and that he would depart and return. [Eliezer]
- His followers worshipped him as (a) god. [Pliny]
- He was called “the Christ.” [Josephus]
- His followers were called “Christians.” [Tacitus, Pliny]
- They were numerous in Bithynia and Rome [Tacitus, Pliny]
- It was a world-wide movement. [Eliezer]
- His brother was James. [Josephus]
[Is the New Testament History? (London, Hodder, 1987), pp. 30 – 31. Cf. McDowell & Wilson, He Walked Among Us (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1993) for more details; free for download here.]
Where, of course, we have long had in hand the Rylands fragment that appears in the above, which dates to c. 125 AD.
Similarly, Luke, author of the Luke-Acts two-volume history from c 6 – 7 BC to c 62 AD that is the backbone of NT historical studies, has long been known to be habitually accurate even in fine details that are only tangential to his purposes. For just one instance, his account of the voyage to Rome in Ac 27 that ended in shipwreck driven by folly, has long been a highly valuable source.
So, why should there be such a determined resistance to the obvious conclusion that there was a C1 figure in Palestinian Judaism, who claimed to be the messiah as prophesied in the well kn own Hebraic scriptures, and who ended up in a fatal confrontation with the Judaean and Roman elites?
Because, of course, he was widely seen as performing miracles, especially having risen from death with 500+ witnesses, starting with a circle of women followers. (By the criterion of embarrassment, that is a telling detail, as the audience in C1 would have been much inclined to be dismissive at that point. This is a hallmark of seeking to say it as it was.)
Miracles, of course, are deeply suspect in skeptical circles, hence the dismissive remark on “fairy tales.”
The only problems here are, that there is such an abundant testimony down to today that miracles happen that, for instance, the majority of physicians accept this as reality. Similarly, contrary to the brush-offs of a Lewontin, by their very nature, miracles would be rare so it is entirely consistent that believers in a world created by the God of order who holds all things together by his power who occasionally — for good purposes of his own — acts beyond the usual course of nature, would also be pivotal founders of modern science; which studies the usual order of nature. Men like Boyle, Newton and the like down to men like Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin and on down to today.
Hume was indulging in some question-begging, and there is to this day no good reason to — per a reasonable and open minded assessment of evidence — regard miracles as incredible. Especially once God is a real possibility.
So, what is really going on here, is that we are seeing people walking in a materialist hyperskeptical circle, from there is no God to there can be no evidence for God, and so any claimed evidence can be dismissed.
If the reader is interested, s/he may want to have a look here on in context, and may wish to look at the video here:
[vimeo 17960119]
But, such is not the main thrust for this post.
Our real concern — the one relevant to design thinking and why it is viewed so dismissively — is the underlying worldview attitude of selective hyperskepticism, the attitude that I have summarised thusly:
that fallacy which seeks to reject or dismiss otherwise credible evidence by demanding an inappropriately high type or degree of warrant not applicable to matters of fact, i.e. the general type of question being discussed. Especially, where the same standard is not exerted in assessing substantially parallel cases that make claims that one is inclined to accept.
What we are seeing is a case of history, where we can look at records and remains of records that can be dated and put together on a reasonable timeline that explains the birth of one of the major movements that helped shape our civilisation. We can see a body of historical evidence that has led the absolute majority to all but a few of relevant scholars across the past generation to accept the following pattern of historical conclusions regarding matters of fact, after centuries of the most stringent dispute and challenge:
1. Jesus died by crucifixion [–> which implies his historicity!].
2. He was buried.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.
4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof).
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.
9. The Church was born and grew.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).
12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic).
[Cf. Habermas’ paper here and a broader more popular discussion here. NT Wright’s papers here and here give a rich and deep background analysis. Here is a video of a pastoral presentation of a subset of the facts. Habermas presents the case as videos here and here, in two parts. Here is a video of a debate he had with Antony Flew.]
And, in the teeth of such a body of evidence and sifted conclusions based on the following principles and criteria:
. . . which are relevant to textual criticism:
-
Multiple sources – If two or more sources attest to the same fact, it is more likely authentic
-
Enemy attestation – If the writers enemies corroborate a given fact, it is more likely authentic
-
Principle of embarrassment – If the text embarrasses the writer, it is more likely authentic
- Eyewitness testimony – First hand accounts are to be prefered
Early testimony – an early account is more likely accurate than a later one
. . . what do we see?
DAWKINS: The evidence [Jesus] existed is surprisingly shaky . . .
T: Can you provide any evidence that “Jesus Christ” ever existed? And no, the fairy tales in the bible aren’t evidence.
This is not a reasonable mindset, one open to evidence or logic that points where it would not go, not even to the strong voice of the consensus of relevant scholarship on a matter of record that is easily accessible.
It would be one thing, if we were dealing with people who accepted that Jesus lived and was a religious figure in C1 Palestine and had fatal disputes with the Judaean and Roman authorities, but had doubts on the traditional explanation for his empty tomb as discovered shortly thereafter. It would be another thing if we were dealing with people who came to grips with the sort of comparative explanations of the minimal facts summarised above, that we may tabulate (and reflect on) as follows and debate in light of the inference to best explanation approach:
|
“Theory”
|
Match to four major credible facts regarding Jesus of Nazareth & his Passion
|
Overall score/20
|
|||
|
Died by crucifixion
(under Pontius Pilate) at
Jerusalem c 30 AD |
Was buried, tomb was found empty
|
Appeared to multiple disciples,
many of whom proclaimed
& suffered for their
faith
|
Appeared to key
objectors who then became church leaders: James & Paul |
||
| Bodily Resurrection |
5
|
5
|
5
|
5
|
20
|
| Visions/ hallucinations |
5
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
10
|
| Swoon/recovery |
1
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
8
|
| Wrong tomb |
5
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8
|
| Stolen body/fraud |
5
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
9
|
| Quran 4:155 -6: “They did not slay him, neither crucified him.” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “Jesus never existed” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “Christianity as we know it was cooked up by Constantine and others at Nicea, who censored/ distorted the original record” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| “What we have today is ‘Paulianity,’ not the original teachings of Jesus and his disciples” | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Christianity — including the resurrection — is a gradually emerging legend based on a real figure |
5
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
8
|
| Complete legend/pagan copycat (Greek, Persian, Egyptian, etc) |
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
4
|
(I have given my scores above, based on reasoning that should be fairly obvious. As an exercise you may want to come up with your own scores on a 5 – 1 scale: 5 = v. good/ 4 = good/ 3 = fair/ 2 = poor/ 1 = v. poor, with explanations. Try out blends of the common skeptical theories to see how they would fare.)
But no, we are dealing with a sweep it off the table dismissal driven by patently selective hyperskepticism.
In the teeth of direct record, chain of custody and serious historical scholarship.
That is the first thing that we have to make sure we understand.
That brings to my mind the issue posed by the intellectual virtues approach to epistemology, summarised by W. Jay Wood:
Intellectual virtues . . . include character traits such as wisdom, prudence, foresight, understanding, discernment, truthfulness and studiousness, among others. Here too are to be found their opposite vices: folly, obtuseness, gullibility, dishonesty, willful naiveté and vicious curiosity, to name a few. Certain excellences and deficiencies, then, shape our intellectual as well as our moral lives. An epistemology that takes the virtues seriously claims that our ability to lay hold of the truth about important matters turns on more than our IQ or the caliber of school we attend; it also depends on whether we have fostered within ourselves virtuous habits of mind. Our careers as cognitive agents, as persons concerned to lay hold of the truth and pursue other important intellectual goals, will in large measure succeed or fail as we cultivate our intellectual virtues . . . . Careful oversight of our intellectual lives is imperative if we are to think well, and thinking well is an indispensable ingredient in living well . . . only by superintending our cognitive life (the way, for example, we form, defend, maintain, revise, abandon and act on our beliefs about important matters) can we become excellent as thinkers and, ultimately, excellent as persons.
If we fail to oversee our intellectual life and cultivate virtue, the likely consequences will be a maimed and stunted mind that thwarts our prospects for living a flourishing life. [Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous, (Leicester, UK: Apollos/IVP, 1998), pp. 16 – 17.]
My first conclusion, then, is that until this underlying selective hyperskepticism is confronted and broken, we cannot expect reasonable discussion with objectors like that.
No wonder, then, that when these objectors see the logic of the design inference:
. . . or face the simplified, log reduced Chi metric expression that is parallel to it:
Chi_500 = I*S – 500, bits beyond the solar system threshold
. . . their reaction, too often, is dismissal and evasion, not serious and sober discussion of a serious issue on inference on inductively warranted signs.
Second conclusion: as was underscored to me yesterday when thanks to a returning old commenter, I saw what I first said six years ago, and saw how much of a deadlock has happened because of the type of intransigence seen above, it is high time for a fresh beginning.
Namely, that we need a dialogue with a coalition of the willing, on different sides of the key issues, who are willing to discuss reasonable, in an amicable fashion, under the guidance of first principles of right reason and reasonableness, towards learning the truth.
Is it too much to hope for the possibility of such a dialogue? END