In an interview with Playboy, September just past, Dr Dawkins made some dismissive remarks on the historicity of Jesus, in the context of having made similarly dismissive talking points about Intelligent Design. As UD News noted:
PLAYBOY: What is your view of Jesus?
DAWKINS: The evidence he existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.
PLAYBOY: You’ve read the Bible.
DAWKINS: I haven’t read it all, but my knowledge of the Bible is a lot better than most fundamentalist Christians’.
Since this matter is a part of the wider issues of atheism and its cultural agendas, which are often presented in the name of Science sez, I have now responded in some details, here.
On this wider cultural agenda of atheism issue, Lee Strobel’s video on The Case for Christ may also be of interest:
[vimeo 17960119]
One may wonder why such is relevant to an ID blog. Right from the very beginning, however, Darwin made it very clear that there was a wider socio-cultural, worldviews agenda connected to Darwin’s science. This may easily be discerned from his 1881 letter of reply to a man better known to history as Marx’s [de facto?] son-in-law, Aveling:
. . . though I am a strong advocate for free thought [–> NB: free-thought is an old synonym for skepticism, agnosticism or atheism] on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family [–> NB: especially his wife, Emma], if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion.
The letter just cited makes it utterly clear that a key background motive for Darwin’s theorising on origins science was to put God out of a job, thus indirectly undermining the plausibility of believing in God. In thinking and acting like this, he probably believed that he was championing enlightenment and science-led progress in their path to victory over backward, irrational but emotionally clung-to beliefs. And so his strategy was to lead in a science that was in his mind showing just how outdated and ill-founded the Judaeo-Christian theism that had dominated the West since Constantine in the 300’s was.
In short, there has always been an anti-Christian socio-cultural agenda closely tied to the rise of Darwinism. And, that has to be faced and is a legitimate part of the wider discussion, though of course — as my reply to Dawkins should make plain — it is tied more closely to principles of historical warrant than to science.
On the design issue Dawkins also raised during the interview, my 101 level response is here on.
A key point in that response is to take note of a basic problem, typified by prof Richard Lewontin (cf five cases in point here, including more details from Lewontin) who openly admitted to a priori evolutionary materialism in his NYRB review of Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World:
. . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated . . . [[“Billions and billions of demons,” NYRB, Jan 1997. Further excerpted and discussed here.]
Seminal ID thinker Prof Johnson”s reply in First Things that November is apt:
So, while the scientific issues are central to UD’s purpose and are therefore given pride of place in our posts, wider concerns are also legitimately to be addressed, and we will not allow silly talking points about “Creationism in a cheap tuxedo” intimidate us from speaking to such issues.
For that matter, let us observe what that silly red-neck Bible-thumping Fundy — NOT, Plato had to say in solemn warning on the socio-cultural associations of evolutionary Materialism, in The Laws, Bk X, 2350 years ago:
Ath. . . . [[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [[In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily “scientific” view! Notice also, the trichotomy of causal factors: (a) chance/accident, (b) mechanical necessity of nature, (c) art or intelligent design and direction.] . . . .
[[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.– [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke’s views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic “every man does what is right in his own eyes” chaos leading to tyranny. )] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality “naturally” leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, “naturally” tend towards ruthless tyranny], and not in legal subjection to them.
Just in case you think that is an improper, unwarranted projection unto Science from objectors to Darwin, let me cite the well known remarks by prof William Provine at the 1998 Darwin Day keynote speech at the University of Tennessee (this being his native state):
Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This lesson is one of the hardest for humans to learn. We cannot accept that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous: indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
We humans have purpose on the brain. We find it difficult to look at anything without wondering what it is “for,” what the motive for it or the purpose behind it might be. The desire to see purpose everywhere is natural in an animal that lives surrounded by machines, works of art, tools and other designed artifacts – an animal whose waking thoughts are dominated by its own goals and aims . . . .
Somewhere between windscreen wipers and tin openers on the one hand, and rocks and the universe on the other, lie living creatures. Living bodies and their organs are objects that, unlike rocks, seem to have purpose written all over them . . . . The true process that has endowed wings, eyes, beaks, nesting instincts and everything else about life with the strong illusion of purposeful design is now well understood.
It is Darwinian natural selection . . . . The true utility function of life, that which is being maximized in the natural world, is DNA survival. But DNA is not floating free; it is locked up in living bodies, and it has to make the most of the levers of power at its disposal. Genetic sequences that find themselves in cheetah bodies maximize their survival by causing those bodies to kill gazelles. Sequences that find themselves in gazelle bodies increase their chance of survival by promoting opposite ends. But the same utility function-the survival of DNA-explains the “purpose” of both the cheetah [–> i.e. predator] and the gazelle [–> i.e. prey] . . . .
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference . . . . DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. [[ “God’s Utility Function,” Sci. Am. Aug 1995, pp. 80 – 85.]
[[NB: This article raises the issue of the problem of evil, here emphasising the problem of natural evil; probably the strongest argument in the atheists’ arsenal, but one that only works by implicitly assuming that good and evil, thus moral obligation, are real; while ducking the implication that the only valid worldview in a world in which OUGHT is real, is one that has a foundational IS that adequately grounds ought. And materialism — scientific atheism today, has no such is. So, the objecting atheist actually has no grounds to stand on to make the argument; his argument, in the end is self-defeating, and so the proper response is to insist that such an atheist face that issue before proceeding further. (Cf here for a preliminary discussion of the problem of evil from a Christian perspective.)]
So, it is entirely appropriate for us to respond to that wider view of science, society, worldviews and cultural agendas. It therefore seems to me that there are some serious issues that we need to ponder as we reflect on where our civilisation is heading at this time. END
_____________
F/N, Nov 6th: Given the onward attempted objections to the list of minimal facts and the failure to substantially respond to my onward rebuttals at 34 below, it is worth adding as a footnote from the linked post in my personal blog, the following summary of the criteria of authenticity, and a table that addresses how well ten skeptical theories from C1 – 21 can handle a key cluster of credible facts.
First, the criteria of high quality facts — while in many cases from antiquity, high quality sources do not meet such facts, the following are strong indicators of a credible claim:
-
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 preferred
- Early testimony – an early account is more likely accurate than a later one
Second, the table that compares alternative explanations of four key credible facts that meet such criteria:
|
“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.)
Laying a priori anti-supernaturalism aside as a patent case of worldview level question-begging closed mindedness, the above table shows that there are two serious candidates today, the resurrection as historically understood, or some version of a collective vision/hallucination that led to a sincere (but plainly mistaken) movement.
The latter of course runs into the problem that such collective visions are not psychologically plausible as the cultural expectations of a resurrection would have been of a general one in the context of the obvious military triumph of Israel. Nor, does it explain the apparently missing body. Moreover, we know separately, that the culturally accepted alternative would have been individual prophetic visions of the exalted that on being shared would comfort the grieving that the departed rested with God. So, an ahead of time individual breakthrough resurrection — even, one that may be accompanied by some straws in the wind of what is to come in fulness at the end — is not part of the mental furniture of expectations in C1 Judaism. Where, hallucinations and culturally induced visions are going to be rooted in such pre-existing mental “furniture.”
So, it is in order to call for a serious rethinking on the part of Dr Dawkins and co.