Gary Habermas Shows Why the 'Minimal Facts' of Jesus' Death Can't Establish the Resurrection

Gary Habermas is a New Testament scholar and philosopher of religion at Liberty University who has devoted much of his career to defending a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus. For over 30 years now, Habermas has collected and analyzed scholarly materials published on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, distilling them down to a core set of trends. His work has been cited by numerous Christian apologists, perhaps most notably in The Case for Christ and the debates and writings of William Lane Craig.

Recently, Dr. Habermas appeared on the Unbelievable radio show and podcast in dialogue with James Crossley on whether the "minimal facts" surrounding Jesus' death support the resurrection. Crossley is an agnostic New Testament scholar at the University of Sheffield and the author of a book called Jesus and the Chaos of History. The minimal facts are intended to be general points of agreement acceptable even to skeptics, and the two criteria Habermas gives are that they be facts with multiple lines of argument supporting them, and they share in a consensus made up of the "vast majority" of New Testament scholars.

Habermas identifies 6 minimal facts in the show, which are as follows:

1. Jesus died by Roman crucifixion.

2. The disciples had experiences they believed to be of the risen Jesus.

3. Some among the disciples died for their belief.

4. James, a skeptic, was converted.

5. Paul, a skeptic and persecutor of Christians, was converted.

6. The earliness of the proclamation of the risen Jesus.

One immediately noteworthy thing missing from this list is the empty tomb. To his credit, Gary concedes that the empty tomb is not a minimal fact because of the many biblical historians who dispute it. As the host, Justin, remarks, this seems contrary to what some apologists, like William Lane Craig, have attempted to cull from Dr. Habermas' work. In his book God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, co-written with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor Craig writes: "There are at least four facts about the fate of the historical Jesus that are widely accepted by New Testament historians today." (p. 22, italics mine) Dr. Craig then goes on to articulate some of the reasons that "most scholars" accept the empty tomb.

Of course, it could be contended that this is just another way of saying that the majority of scholars favor the empty tomb as a historical fact. However, 1/3 to 1/4 of experts dissenting from a given viewpoint is not a negligible difference. Things get even sketchier when you look at the methodology behind Dr. Habermas' 2005 study and discover how that figure is calculated. The survey is not a comprehensive one of thousands of New Testament scholars, it's a survey of select literature published in German, French and English since 1975. While Gary's work offers important insights, he also has not released his data, despite requests for it, and the closest we get to an idea of how many sources he's surveyed is "more than 1400" in that 2005 study of his. Break that down over 30 years and that's a ballpark average of 46.7 studies examined per year. It's hardly a robust amount of data from which to assess the opinions of New Testament scholarship on the whole.

This methodological problem has implications beyond the empty tomb, too, for all of the six minimal facts mentioned above, as well as any other facts that could be conjured up on the same basis. So whether Dr. Habermas wants to single out 4 facts, 6 facts, 12 facts, or his exceedingly generous 21 facts, the fatal flaw remains present in all cases. Statistical analysis is only as good as your data and the method you use to analyze that data, and a study like the one published by Dr. Habermas in a religious studies journal would not pass in an introductory level Stats class (I say this from experience). Granted, it was probably not Gary's intent to do a rigorous statistical analysis, but the limitations of this research need to be noted when attempts are made at extrapolating certain trends from it. For more on this specific concern, see Richard Carrier's article, Innumeracy: A Fault to Fix.

But what real use is a list of even roughly calculated minimal facts when it requires another list of supplementary philosophical assumptions in order to support the resurrection? Near the end of the discussion on the podcast, Habermas explains that the way he sees of moving from the death of Jesus and the reports of his postmortem appearances to the involvement of the supernatural is by bringing in "worldview aspects." This is, in fact, something he notes early on in the show. Among these assumptions are conclusions about the character and identity of Jesus, and the continuation of life after death, though I would argue there are additional assumptions about the existence and nature of god. In a chapter from The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, Robert Greg Cavin outlines still more hidden assumptions in the standard resurrection story of Jesus, which is not just revivification, but has to do with Jesus being raised as a living supernatural body sometime after his death.

At one point in the episode, Dr. Habermas refers to the resurrection allegedly supported by the minimal facts as "mundane," saying that the gospels depict the postmortem appearances as if seeing a dead friend at the supermarket, acting as normal. Yet the point by Cavin above reveals this to be naive. A mundane resurrection in that sense would be as easily dismissed as any incident of a grieving loved one hallucinating their dearly departed. There is nothing especially impressive about it. The minimal facts are where many apologists say that the resurrection differs from other allegations of resuscitation or revivification of a corpse. If the transformation of the disciples is a stand out feature of the resurrection story, it would seem to play a part in discounting the mundane nature of events as Habermas portrays it. After all, we're often told, people might see the dead after they're gone, but they generally don't go to be martyred for them. If this famous image of the disciples valiantly accepting death having seen the risen lord is as true as apologists claim it is, then the resurrection simply can't be a mundane occurrence by their own reasoning.

Does this not also say something about the exceptional kind of assumptions that are required to make a minimal facts case for the resurrection function at all? We are not talking about spotting someone in the supermarket, alive and apparently well when they'd been dead the day before. We are talking about something much less "mundane," and it's the reason why the case for the resurrection has been turned into an argument for the existence of god by an apologist like William Lane Craig. There is an element of the supernatural, a "worldview aspect," as Habermas called it. It isn't simply that Jesus appeared again to his followers, like in a daydream, it's that he miraculously rose from the dead, in a way that his followers took as a vindication of their ideas about his teachings and his identity. It meant, for them, that god not only existed, but that he was the god represented by Jesus, and Jesus was the sort of person god not only had the power to raise back to life, but wanted to raise, did raise, and had the power and will to raise into something more than just a reanimated earthly form.
 

The miracle of the resurrection is the saving grace of many Christians. To Paul it gave hope for a life beyond death and for a righting of the wrongs faced in this life. Entertaining the historicity of the resurrection without the supernatural and metaphysical assumptions behind it is practically unimaginable, not only for atheists and skeptics but for believing Christians, too. This brings us to the awkward position of either asking each other to buy into our philosophical presuppositions, or leaving things at a set of bare minimal facts that is by itself incapable of showing anything except what it already contains. The minimal facts are, one might say, minimally interesting. Even if we put aside the troubling concerns with the methodology that undergirds them, they aren't what's really doing the work in winning minds. Rather than minimizing background assumptions and asking us to buy into some ample facts, the apologetic case for the resurrection minimizes the facts and asks us to buy into some ample assumptions.

Should Bioethics Become Less Religious?

The following post comes from a paper I wrote for a Spring Bioethics class. I figured the material in it would be interesting and relevant enough to be featured here. Enjoy!    -Taylor

Introduction

In Genesis 2:7, Adam is given life when God breathes into his nostrils. Taking inspiration from this and other passages, some interpreters of Jewish law hold that death occurs only at the moment when breathing stops. Consequently, organ donation can be a touchy subject among certain Jewish communities in cases where breathing continues with the aid of a ventilator even after brain function has ceased. Israel currently has one of the lowest rates of organ donation among developed nations, with a waiting list for kidney transplants that has increased by 40% over the last ten years since laws were enacted limiting the circumstances for donation.[1] Religious belief is in conflict with what medical science has to say about death, as well as with the ethics of refusing organ transplants to those who might die without them.

The focus of bioethics is on how ethical theory ought to inform decisions in medicine.[2] Of significant concern to bioethicists like Gregory Pence is a question such as, “What makes an act right?” Numerous avenues for consideration are available to those who might ask about the rightness of denying organ transplants on religious grounds, or of letting any religious belief inform any medical decision. Beneficence may motivate us to emphasize the medical well-being of a patient, yet respect for autonomy may involve concession to other aspects of a patient's well-being, including their religious views. This picture becomes all the more complicated when religiously-oriented cultural values are permitted to affect the health and well-being of those who may not share such values.

A line must be drawn somewhere, it seems, and recently one bioethicist has suggested that line be drawn at religion itself. It's one thing to show respect for people of different beliefs, but quite another thing to give preferential treatment to their beliefs in medicine. Religion must be 'exorcised' from bioethics, according to this argument, where it currently holds a privileged status it ought not hold, and with it gone the field will be better able to take an unbiased look at health and human welfare. It is my contention, however, that the case for this irreligious bioethics rests on problematic assumptions about religion, ethics, and science. I begin with a discussion of the argument, followed by some considerations in support of it, and end with objections.

Irreligious Bioethics

In his paper, “In Defense of Irreligious Bioethics,” Timothy Murphy argues that the discipline of bioethics should strive to separate itself from, and even offer critiques of, religious views.[3] The article is largely a reaction to arguments like those advanced by Renee Fox and Judith Swazey, who contend that the modern bioethical paradigm, structured as it is on predominantly Western notions of individualism and individual rights, is incompatible with the religiously-grounded traditions and worldviews of many non-Western cultures.[4] In seeming agreement, Murphy proposes that religion be jettisoned from bioethical theory and practice. Though respect is to be shown to those of different beliefs, and understanding the influence of religion upon one's culture is to be regarded as important, all religions, Murphy recommends, must be treated “with a hermeneutic of suspicion.” Such an approach will allegedly offer benefits not afforded by a secular or religious bioethics, including primarily a greater promise of objectivity.

Following on from Fox and Swazey, Murphy defines religion as a focus on “basic and transcendental aspects of the human condition, and enduring problems of meaning, to questions about human origins, identity; the 'whys' of pain and suffering, injustice and evil; the mysteries of life and death; and the wonders and enigmas of hope and endurance, compassion and caring, forgiveness and love.” Against this broad definition, he defines irreligion as “a lack of religious belief or being at variance with religious principles.” The crucial distinction here seems to be that bioethics ought to consider cultural backgrounds, even be able to learn from religion, but what it adopts cannot be adopted on theological grounds, it can only be adopted based on separate moral or logical reasoning. The advantage conferred in doing this, Murphy claims, is that it offers bioethics “a detached vantage point” from which to observe and judge religion in concert with concerns about welfare or medical technologies, for example. One is free to ask a question like 'Does belief in God undermine efforts to protect people from harm?' in a way that religious bioethics presumably cannot ask without falling into bias.

As an illustration of irreligious bioethics in practice, Murphy discusses intercessory prayer. Why don't those praying for others prioritize their prayers according to things like contributory negligence? Why not pray for everyone everywhere, instead of praying as if only certain conditions or certain individual people can be effectively helped by prayer? Why even think God responds to prayer as though the ones not prayed for will be neglected? Murphy cites studies by Herbert Benson and Leanne Roberts casting doubt on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer, leading up to his conclusion that bioethics has no good reason to affirm the value of prayer, and so must proceed irreligiously, framing its concepts and designs without reference to it.

Where religion seems to most conflict with bioethics is, in Murphy's view, that it relies on assumptions that are “unfalsifiable, infinitely mutable in the face of objections, rooted in personal experiences that defy independent analysis, or rooted in the murk of human history.” Just as metallurgy is able to do its work without invoking divinities, deities, revelation, miracles, or theological accounts of human lives, bioethics should be able to proceed without capitulating to religious views, perhaps even be better off. By seeing the immanent world as the only world, Murphy thinks irreligious bioethics can better concentrate on the work to be done here and now.

Imagine No Religion

Something can be said for the incompatibility of the modern bioethical paradigm with religious traditions. Howard Brody and Arlene Macdonald note that contemporary bioethics operates under a rational secular mode of thought, which they connect with John Rawls and liberal philosophical tradition. “To produce an ideally fair outcome,” they explain, “Rawls envisioned a group of choosers who were rational, mutually disinterested, and concerned to advance the interests of themselves and those they cared about most.”[5] On this approach, the public sphere came to embody things like government and public institutions, while religion, family, and voluntary associations were relegated to the private sphere. In the interest of creating a just and orderly society with the greatest amount of assent, comprehensive doctrines are excluded from the public square. Yet these doctrines contain fundamental teachings about virtues and principles that do not always coincide with the kind of individualistic, rational, or secularist values at the forefront of the paradigm on which modern bioethics is based. As Brody and Macdonald note, this favored approach has come under “increasing criticism” in recent years, not just from religious believers, but from feminist circles as well.

Is this really reason to jettison religion from the fold, though? In fact, there is some research to suggest that religious skeptics perform better on analytical tasks than religious believers. Pennycook et al. assigned syllogisms to a group of 91 psychology undergrad students and measured for their ability to determine the validity of a syllogism, as well as their own assessment of the believability of the concluding statements.[6] Even after controlling for variables like sex, socioeconomic status, age, education, and so on, the study found a negative relation between analytic thinking and religious belief. This seems to be part of what Murphy has in mind when he recommends irreligious bioethics as a means of “getting past biases implicit in religious views.” An ability to recognize and correctly evaluate the logic of religious assumptions is indeed important for ethics and for medicine, arguably for religion itself, and this ability being associated more strongly with religious skepticism is a point in favor of a skeptical approach to religion in bioethics.

What about moral reasoning? One's ability with logical syllogisms could have nothing to do with their abilities in forming moral judgments. However, two studies published by Jennifer Wright and Ryan Nichols show that religiosity does influence moral judgments, particularly when it comes to appraising the motivations and moral character of non-believers. Between the two studies, over 500 participants were presented with cases varying in terms of religiosity, action valence (moral/immoral), and action duration. Participants evaluated scenarios where the same action was performed, albeit with variation in whether the agent involved was described as Christian or atheist. Wright and Nichols conclude their paper with a summary of the general opinion found among the religious believers in their studies: “atheists are not only people who feel less bad about their immoral actions, but they are also people from whom immoral behaviors should be expected, given their beliefs and their shared community values.”[7] If we are concerning ourselves with questions about religion's potential interference with ethical choices and medical decisions – the questions Dr. Murphy wants us to ask – studies like these seem to call for more than a cursory glance at the arguments for irreligious bioethics.

Objections

It's one thing to note the flaws in human judgment or the biases behind certain ways of thought, and it's quite another thing to propose that these are best resolved by weeding out the influence of religion, as if treating a disease. Exactly how Murphy's bold new vision for bioethics should be applied is a question left largely unanswered, but it raises important concerns, such as how far is too far. How sure can Murphy be that his own solution is not just exchanging one set of doctrines for another? In response, Jennifer Miller observes that we often tend to be overconfident in assessing our own objectivity and abilities, a point amusingly illustrated by reference to polls revealing that 93% of American drivers and 69% of Swedish drivers consider themselves better at driving than the average motorist, despite this being statistically impossible.[8] Indeed, whatever studies may say about the rationality or morality of non-believers, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance are known to affect us all, regardless of where we align ourselves socially.

In his paper, Murphy concedes, “we all belong somewhere on the continuum of ideology, but,” he continues, “some people are more prone to ideological excess than others, and religious believers can be vulnerable in this regard.” Evidence of this special vulnerability is not provided, yet one still wonders why bioethics specifically should be tasked with the responsibility of stamping out religious explanations. If it's a case against faith Murphy is seeking, analytic philosophy in general has a long and rich history of challenging the claims of religion. William Stempsey, Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, goes so far as to argue that, “bioethics too often takes philosophy so superficially as to fall into outright error, as when autonomy, understood as the freedom to follow one's own desires, is attributed to Immanuel Kant.”[9] If the worry is that bioethics is especially susceptible to poorly reasoned views when under the influence of religion, one can respond, as Miller does, that the interdisciplinary nature of the field – drawing on law, history, psychology, economics, utilitarianism, deontology, and a range of other methodologies – serves as an effective safeguard against any sort of widespread 'corruption.' In fact, a compelling argument can be made that it is this very openness of the discipline that gives it the strength and relevance it has.

There is no “view from nowhere,” as Thomas Nagel once explained. In ethics, as in most of philosophy, one often comes to accept different starting points, priors, or principles that involve as much debate and defense as any application of any one of them may involve. Irreligious bioethics seems to have in mind a way that bioethics should do its normative work, and though the ideas are not made explicit, they are nevertheless open to dispute. Bioethics is not like metallurgy like Murphy supposes; it can be and ought to be informed by science where appropriate, but the ethics component of it distinguishes it in a vital sense. We don't distinguish metallurgy from 'irreligious metallurgy,' because the concepts of metallurgy come from a naturalistic methodology available to the religious and non-religious alike. If there is a distinction between forms of bioethics, it serves to distinguish the field from sciences like metallurgy, and in some important ways.[10] Murphy's example of intercessory prayer is instructive here, for not only do the arguments against its efficacy stem largely from that naturalistic methodology, which has long been part of the sciences, but anything that might be further drawn out of such studies, like whether it's permissible for a nurse to pray for their patient, would simply be outside the realm of empirical science. Normative judgments are not discernible through the scientific method alone.

What is so problematic for bioethics if room is left for theologians to offer their own views on certain bioethical matters? In fact, a number of theologians have critiqued prayer studies like those mentioned by Murphy for failing to understand the purpose of prayer, a point that can just as effectively be used to discourage prayer from being implemented as any sort of clinical medical treatment in place of other, far more effectual treatments.[11] In an ironic twist, then, religion can be useful in countering certain strains of religious reasoning that threaten to encroach upon the territory of bioethics. Why not make use of arguments and ideas from wherever we can? Bioethics itself has religious roots in many of its foundational figures, including Beauchamp and Childress, who articulated the four principles of autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence. Religious traditions can and do offer ethical ideas that can be accepted on secular grounds, such as Catholicism and natural law, Judaism and Noahide law, or even the Golden Rule, found among innumerable religious and philosophical teachings. Of course, Murphy says he is not opposed to allowing bioethics to “cannibalize” ideas from pretty much anywhere it can, so long as they can be accepted on non-theological grounds, but this already seems to be how the discipline operates. Irreligious bioethics would seem to prematurely shut the door on anything that even resembles religious thought, when some of their views and arguments could prove quite helpful in doing some of the work that Murphy wants to see done in bioethics, like overcoming archaic notions of health and healing, and moving towards a more robust understanding of medicine. Excluding religion from the playing field will only create division where it need not exist, and may actually evoke a kind of change that not even Murphy wants to see.

Conclusion

Would the situation for organ donations be better in Israel if physicians and bioethicists across the country decided to abandon religious considerations in one fell swoop? It's difficult to imagine how this could be. Even if all medical practitioners complied, a lot of religious patients would suddenly find themselves with fewer options, some probably, to their minds, with no options at all. Although lives would likely be saved, they could well come at a cost. When stark lines are drawn and people feel they are no longer being listened to on matters that concern their well-being and their very deepest convictions, they are often influenced into taking highly polarized sides, and the outcome can indeed be toxic, as may be best illustrated in the controversies and crimes that have occurred over the issue of abortion.

That religion creates problems is something that few religious believers would deny, but to ignore the resolutions it can also inspire is to be guilty of the same biased thinking that irreligious bioethics is supposed to reduce. While organ donation is low in Israel, and the kidney waiting list is long, the circumstances have motivated many in the Jewish community in Israel to step up and promote transplants from living donors, leading to a two-thirds increase in donor registrations, a record number of kidney transplants in 2013, and a large drop in the number of patients going abroad for donations. Perhaps just as importantly, the debate over this issue has presented the opportunity for many Israelis to reassess their own beliefs and reconsider what their religion teaches about life, death, and our ethical obligations to one another. Changes like these seem unlikely to develop on a view like Murphy's, where religion is actively expelled from the public square.

Exactly where the boundaries should be between religion and bioethics is a matter of no small contention. Yet just as we can talk about harms without having an absolute and agreed upon definition of concepts like health and well-being, it seems to me we can discuss and evaluate approaches to doing bioethics without having an absolute and agreed upon notion of the purpose of bioethics, or an all-encompassing idea of the proper roles for certain phenomena within bioethics. As a paradigm, irreligious bioethics would filter out a great deal of things from which the field could stand to gain. Many ethical systems are premised on metaphysical claims at the higher, ontological levels, and Murphy's anti-transcendentalist approach would seem to undermine these. In addition, the paradigm holds itself to a standard that even it arguably cannot meet, claiming to offer criticism of religious views when analytic philosophy is better equipped, and claiming to 'protect' bioethics when the discipline of ethics seems entirely capable of thorough self-examination. Indeed, it appears that quite a leap of faith is required to believe that irreligious bioethics could do anything besides further exacerbate the tensions and problems already present in bioethics.

Citations

1. Kevin Sack, “A Clash of Religion and Bioethics Complicates Organ Donation in Israel,” The New York Times (Aug 17, 2014). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/world/middleeast/a-clash-of-religion-and-bioethics-complicates-organ-donation-in-israel.html

2. Gregory Pence, Medical Ethics: Accounts of Groundbreaking Cases, 6^th ed. (2011), p. 339.

3. Timothy Murphy, “In Defense of Irreligious Bioethics,” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 2012): 3-10.

4. Renee Fox and Judith Swazey, “Ignoring the Social and Cultural Context of Bioethics is Unacceptable,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, vol. 19, no. 3 (2010): 278-282.

5. Howard Brody and Arlene Macdonald, “Religion and bioethics: toward an expanded understanding,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, vol. 34, no. 2 (2013): 133-145.

6. Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler and Jonathan A. Fuggelsang, “Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 20, no. 4 (2013): 806-811.

7. Jennifer Wright and Ryan Nichols, “The Social Cost of Atheism: How Perceived Religiosity Influences Moral Appraisal,” Journal of Cognition and Culture, 14 (2014): 93-115.

8. Jennifer Miller, “Irreligious Bioethics, Nonsense on Stilts?” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 2012): 15-17.

9. William E. Stempsey, “Bioethics Needs Religion,” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 2012): 17-18.

10. D. Gareth Jones and Maja Whitaker, “Reorienting Bioethics by Releasing It From Any Religious Moorings,” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 2012): 24-26.

11. Audrey Chapman, “In Defense of the Role of a Religiously Informed Bioethics,” The American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 2012): 26-28.

Has Peter Boghossian Disqualified Himself from the Adult Table?

Richard Carrier has written a brilliant article addressing yet another astoundingly ignorant statement made by Peter Boghossian, this time on the issue of gay pride. Last year on Twitter, Boghossian expressed his inability to understand how one can be proud of "something one didn’t work for." As if this weren't evidence enough of the man's right-wing politics, he followed up in response to a wave of criticism directed at his tweet by saying: "Questioning that one can be proud to be gay is a leftist blasphemy."

Boghossian is quite fond of telling others how to think and feel, and denouncing them as not even worthy of being taken seriously when they don't meet his standards. He says in two other recent tweets:

Feminists will be taken seriously when they spend at least as much time criticizing abuses of women in the 3rd world as they do in the 1st. 7/30/14

As long as philosophers like Derrida and Zizek are taken seriously, the discipline of philosophy won't be taken seriously. 3/10/15

Carrier points out in his post that Boghossian has a bad habit of not listening to his critics. As the examples above indicate, he speaks in radically divisive tones, and then either goes silent in the face of objections, or reiterates his views with yet more party-line rhetoric. This is quite unbecoming for a philosopher, especially one who emphasizes critical thinking and doxastic openness, as Carrier seems to agree:

Good naturalism, good philosophy, and thus in fact good atheism, means finding out how reality works first, before declaring notions that reinforce the attitudes and ignorance that perpetuate social injustices like homophobia and anti-gay bigotry. Which means if this kind of failure on Boghossian’s part is typical, then it means professor Boghossian is a really bad philosopher.

This appears to suggest that Boghossian does a lot of opening his mouth before he thinks. He tends to draw the lines and point the finger prior to the actual conversation, certainly before things have been anywhere near as resolved as he takes them to be. Let's look at three other prominent examples of this:

1) In his Manual for Creating Atheists, Boghossian recommends that we, "Stigmatize faith-based claims like racist claims," and, "Treat faith as a public health crisis." He suggests a line of children's comics and TV shows starring Epistemology Knights and Faith Monsters. Notably, his book is devoid of any talk of actual philosophical epistemology, so his advocacy of demonizing religious belief at the outset is problematic for its close resemblance to sheer, uncritical propaganda.

2) In his debate on Unbelievable with Tim McGrew (a distinguished Christian philosopher), Boghossian upheld his definition of faith as "pretending to know what you don't know," against the understanding of Christians familiar with the literature, like McGrew, and against an overwhelming consensus poll taken by the show. Of course, Unbelievable is a Christian podcast, but the poll included atheists as well, and more bothersome is that Boghossian really didn't try to defend his definition at all on the show, aside from broad sweeping generalizations about its use - which the poll quickly put to rest. Interestingly, Peter also shied away from endorsing on the podcast his own characterization of faith as "an unclassified cognitive illness disguised as a moral virtue."

3) Last year, Boghossian came under fire for tweeting the following: "Being published in the philosophy of religion should disqualify one from sitting at the adult table." The fallout from this was fairly significant, as multiple voices (including my own) spoke up to disagree with Peter, who almost entirely neglected to respond to criticisms, save for sharing his general thoughts with his pal and self-professed 'bulldog' John Loftus (one may wonder how eager Loftus will be to defend his friend on these recent remarks).

It's been over a year now since I wrote my review of Boghossian's book, and I've had plenty of time to mull over its aims and arguments. I feel that many of the reservations I had while reading through it have been not only confirmed by Boghossian's subsequent behavior, but have been trumpeted loudly in a manner I wouldn't really have anticipated. The whole project frankly seems to be that of a person who is not interested in dialogue, who cares nothing for critical thinking except where it will bolster his own side, and who clings to his own doxastic closure with pride (which he did not work for) as a means of ridiculing and manipulating others into agreeing with him. Don't get me wrong, Boghossian will say he favors the objective route, but his actions and comments increasingly seem to conflict with his verbal assurances.

This is not the sort of model we should be encouraging in the atheist community. Just as there can be "wolves in sheep's clothing" among the religious - people who talk the talk without walking the walk - there can also be those among the non-religious who speak in a way that sounds appealing to us, yet behave in inconsistent ways that may reveal a lot about a person's character. I do not intend to imply that Boghossian is willfully dishonest or anything of the like, but there is a danger in embracing people as role models based primarily on how they sound to us, the familiar language they use, and so on, especially when atheists are already not the most beloved figures among society. Again, that's not to say we should be striving to win some popularity contest, but there is truth to what Boghossian, Dawkins, and others have said about the need to speak up against problematic voices within one's own community.

John Loftus once said to me, in discussion of Boghossian's controversial tweet over philosophy of religion, that he hates to see division among atheists. In fact, I do too. I hate to see atheists attacking each other for political differences. I hate to see atheists not utilizing the tool sets they've developed in thinking about religion to also think about other things, like sex and gender, race and sexual orientation, culture and history, and much more. I wish we could talk about the variety of diverging ideas among us with civility and respect. But Boghossian is not just polarizing the religious and the non-religious, he is divisive to atheists, and his rhetoric often dispenses with civility and respect. Who is he helping with all his language about "the adult table" and being taken seriously? It certainly isn't causing many believers to take him seriously, and even many atheists are finding it hard to do so.

As Carrier says at the conclusion of his article, "Ending religion will do us no good whatever, if all we do is replace it with an atheism that’s just as bad." Our goal shouldn't be to win at any cost. In retrospect, perhaps the title and intent of Boghossian's book should have given it away that this is his aim. He wants to convert the irrational and make them rational. We have a serious problem, though, when the "irrational" are simply defined as those who Boghossian says are not to be taken seriously. As it turns out, that group includes a lot of people, and is growing more and more to look like it consists merely of all those who disagree with Peter about things that are important to him. A Manual for Creating Atheists is starting to look a lot like A Manual for Creating Egotists.

The Echo Chamber: Loftus, Lindsay, Coyne & Boghossian on Philosophy of Religion

I knew it would only be a matter of time before John Loftus had to respond to my latest interview with Graham Oppy on the philosophy of religion. If nothing else, the man is tenacious. After declaring himself Boghossian's bulldog, he seems to have felt compelled by his new title to jump all over any criticisms of Boghossian, including my little post criticizing Peter for a couple of his tweets, using similarly loaded and reactionary vocabulary. John and I exchanged what I thought were polite disagreements, but it eventually devolved into personal attacks, from both sides, admittedly. I won't go into the details because they're unimportant to the subject of this post. However, it's interesting to note how John made a rapid transition (4 days, to be exact) from agreeing on my original post that, "it was unfortunate and disheartening to see Boghossian's two twitter tweets", to declaring it "genius" on par with other famous historical satires. A week later, he pronounced the philosophy of religion dead on the basis of an opinion piece written by Jerry Coyne - a biologist, not a philosopher - analyzing a philosophy of religion paper. Well, I shouldn't say analyzing as much as dismissing it out of personal distaste for its jargon (which every discipline has to those not involved with it). Jeff Lowder has more than adequately addressed Coyne's piece, so I will refrain from covering it here.

In my interview with Dr. Oppy, my aim was not to press him at every turn to offer the best possible justification for philosophy of religion. James Lindsay (a physicist, not a philosopher) offered the astonishing comment on John's blog that if the interview is really "the best defense available to the field" then philosophy of religion truly is dead. Of course, no pretense is ever made to that, but more amusing is the fact that Lindsay doesn't appear to realize that perhaps Dr. Oppy's newly published book on the subject is the kind of defense he should be engaging with. Perhaps he should be engaging with the various textbooks on the discipline, or even with the essays at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The purpose of my interview was to talk with Graham about his new book, touch on some general questions about the field, and get his opinion on some of the criticisms leveled against it. If Lindsay thinks it was a "softball" interview, I guess the most I can say is that he doesn't grasp the point or limitations of a podcast. His attempt to construe it as the best defense of the discipline is nothing short of a strawman, and his take-aways from it are, one could argue, indicative of a 'softball' understanding.

At least John Loftus tries to make some actual arguments, to his credit, instead of proffering bald assertions about the field and the status of the god debate, or speculating on why non-theists would bother with such a thing. Predictably, I disagree with most of John's conclusions, but it's more than I've seen from the others on his side. John asks, "What if philosophy spawned a discipline that, after a few centuries or decades, science has shown us it doesn't deserve to be a separate discipline?" There's a lot packed into this question. The answer to it depends at least on what assumptions one holds about the purpose and limitations of science, what properly defines a field of inquiry and distinguishes it from other fields, and what it means to say a discipline doesn't deserve to exist on its own - all of which are philosophical in nature. Science by itself won't settle the question John asks, it will have to be science premised on certain philosophical assumptions, and this is exactly the matter I don't see Loftus, Lindsay, Coyne, or Boghossian even bothering to address. Why grant these assumptions and why, if we do grant them, should we accept that they do away with philosophy of religion?

The answer to that last question is part of one's philosophy of religion. Dr. Oppy pointed this out on the show, Jeff Lowder has noted it in a recent post, and I expressed it myself over a month ago in a Facebook status. Interestingly, in his post praising the satirical "genius" of Boghossian's tweet (linked to above), John agreed with this assessment, yet in his latest response to my interview he seems to no longer agree. This view, he claims, is misguided because by the same token, "someone who rejects legitimate science by doing pseudoscience is doing science, or someone who does science badly is doing science, and so forth." I don't feel that this analogy is fitting, though. There is an obvious and relevant difference between science and philosophy, for starters. Science operates under a methodology that has been constructed and is still being developed (think of Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn as contributing to historically recent debates on the subject) through philosophical effort. To say that doing pseudoscience is doing science is senseless because scientific claims, in the standard use of the term, have a certain methodology by which they are judged. Calling something pseudoscience is to say that it pretends at being scientific, and the implication is that it is not actually so - typically for the very reason that it does not meet methodological standards. While philosophers have their various ideas of what philosophy should be and should look like, there is no general standardized methodology for doing philosophy in the same way there is for doing science. Philosophy, to be overly simple, is the study of aspects of our existence and experience, or as per the ancient Greeks, it's the study of wisdom.

I think there is a better analogy to be drawn out of Loftus' analogy. Pseudoscience proponents may not be doing science, but they do have a philosophy of science. That is, they have certain ideas about what science should be, how it should be done, or to tie it back in with philosophy in general they have ideas about what science can and should study of our existence and experience. It's not legitimizing their views to hold this position, either, as there can undoubtedly be bad philosophy of science. Many postmodernist philosophies of science are bad philosophies of science, I would say. When we debate with pseudoscience proponents like homeopaths, the debate often involves the question of what science is and what it can and cannot explain. To the extent that it is a methodological debate, it is also a philosophical one. To be an anti-realist about scientific concepts is to hold a particular philosophy of science. But maybe this much doesn't even need to be said, as it could be that when we refer to "doing science", there is just an underlying assumption made that we are doing a particular kind of thing, science according to a particular philosophy. A successful and practical philosophy, but a philosophy nonetheless, and I think this shows why it's the philosophy part of philosophy of religion that matters, and why even rejecting the discipline on the grounds that Loftus and others reject it is itself a philosophy of religion.

John attempts to draw out something surprising from one of Oppy's other remarks:
 

Oppy tells us: "Philosophy of religion as a discipline, I would think, probably doesn't date much earlier than the second World War." This historical lesson is significant, I think, for we did without it for centuries and we can do without it again.

Of course, if this is reason enough to ditch philosophy of religion, it is reason enough to ditch science too, since we did without the discipline of science (I'm speaking here of the enterprise and not the generic inquiry into nature) for centuries before the Scientific Revolution began.

John has many times made reference to Keith Parsons leaving the discipline in 2010, as he does in his latest post:

The discipline is so bad that Dr. Keith Parsons decided to quit teaching it because he could not take it seriously any longer. If he decided to quit teaching it then he agrees it should end as a discipline of learning...

I have actually talked with Dr. Parsons on just this issue, however, and he explains that he left the field over frustration with the "case for theism", and does not see the philosophy of religion as dead. On the contrary, he mentioned John Hick's An Interpretation of Religion as one of the things he sees as fostering worthwhile study.

The other primary point of focus in John's post seems to be the issue of what I'll term religious diversity. Why should we have a discipline in any secular university, he asks, "where theism, or Christian theism, Christian theology or Christian apologetics is privileged and considered to the exclusion of all other religions or apologetics?" Note that this is a point on which there is little disagreement. I think even a good number of Christian philosophers would agree that there needs to be more diversity in the field. What this is not, however, is an argument for a wholesale demolition of the discipline. John seems to feel it is, though, when he claims the only reasonable response is to call for the discipline's end. I continue to see this hopeless picture of things painted by those who want to bring down philosophy of religion, yet I keep finding no substantive justifications for why exactly demolition is in order rather than reform. Imagine abolishing an entire country as a political presence because one party came to hold majority power!

To the secular part of his question, there are many possible responses. Despite how many Christians and apologists are in philosophy of religion, that doesn't mean it is or has to be merely a boot camp for theism. Not all Christian philosophers argue for Christian theism in the courses they teach. By contrast, I've been listening to a lecture series where Shelly Kagan argues directly against the soul, an afterlife, etc. He explains to his students at the very beginning what his class will be like, and they have the option of staying in or moving to another class. Hell, I live in Texas and my Philosophy of Religion professor was openly atheist. Universities are not high schools, and as a university student myself I feel very strongly that we benefit from exposure to other views. It's one of the reasons I engage with people I disagree with. In this age of the internet, there are plenty of resources for students to hear competing views, so offering courses at secular universities that *might* feature arguments for the existence of god, delivered by a professing Christian or by an unsympathetic atheist, hardly seems like a sign of the end times.

In any case, if the philosophy of religion was reinvented as Oppy suggests, then what we would end up with is a Religious Studies discipline and classes focusing on comparative religion, or the varieties of religious experience, where religio[n]s are compared/contrasted/considered and the secular counter-part is offered as a critique of them all.

I don't think this is what Professor Oppy advocates. Wanting more variety is not the same thing as wanting to line up every single opinion in a classroom and present it by the numbers and challenge each view by the numbers. Surveying different religious beliefs doesn't strike me as any more inappropriate to a secular institution than it is to survey countries outside your own in a History class. If the complaint really boils down to, 'we already have other disciplines for that', then I'm tempted to ask, 'so what?' There is already lots of overlap between different disciplines taught at universities, and the question of where one ends and another begins is, as already noted, a philosophical question. If it comes down to the harm caused by religions, I'll say: 1) treating all religions as harmful presupposes a singular definition of religion; 2) the same claim could equally be used to argue that we should not study countries with violent tendencies in our History classes. I also have to admit to being perplexed by John's objection to his misconstrual of Oppy's view, since he advocates that teachers "seek to disabuse their students of the view that faith is a virtue". Is that all that different from offering naturalism as a critique of religion?

It looks, then, as if what John and the echo chamber want is not so much the abolition of philosophy of religion as it is for their particular brand of it to reign supreme in secular universities. Is this better than having a religiously sectarian discipline taught in schools? Part of me sympathizes with thinking outside the box of faith, but another part recognizes that goal as a dangerously authoritarian one. The purpose of institutions of learning should not be to indoctrinate, as our formerly religious universities used to do. This is why I'm just as hesitant to endorse Hector Avalos' project of redefining biblical studies to eliminate the influence of the Bible in modernity. Whatever happened to allowing people to think for themselves? Isn't that what the term 'freethinker' is supposed to mean? How you can claim that label for yourself and simultaneously call for the institutionally-supported indoctrination of others into your own view is beyond me. A freethinker with the need to make everyone think as they do seems undeserving of the name. In fact, isn't that one major characteristic of religious fundamentalists that freethinkers have historically seemed to be so dead-set against?

At the risk of further infuriating some of my critics, I'll end with something I've been wondering for a while - which I genuinely do not intend to be mean-spirited. John Loftus is obviously very proud of his three master's degrees in philosophy of religion. He has brought them up in several posts, in discussions on Facebook, and elsewhere, often to imply that he is qualified to discuss philosophy of religion, while those of us poor young students who haven't earned our degrees yet are not. Normally, I don't bother with petty quibbles over credentials unless there is actually a legitimate appeal to authority to be made. The problem here is that John Loftus quite clearly thinks the field from which he earned his degrees is an illegitimate field. To be frank, he got his three master's, from two Christian universities, in a discipline that his friend Jerry Coyne has referred to as "garbage". So, in all sincerity, I'm left wondering why John Loftus doesn't seem to accept that his degrees are in nonsense. I don't believe that they are, but if philosophy of religion is truly dead, and we should all stop "god-bothering", as James Lindsay calls it, why continue to run a blog like Debunking Christianity, or write books like Christianity is Not Great? You might argue that you're doing your part to bring others into that realization, but why not lead by example?

What I would like to see end is the viciously uncharitable attitude some of my fellow atheists have to anything and everything remotely related to religion, including those who can be construed in the loosest ways as "legitimizing" it. Sometimes I have to wonder what planet certain people live on, where they seem to feel they are in danger of imminent attack from the religious. We should know better. How often do we bring up confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, ingroup and outgroup psychology, and other factors that can play a role in the religious mindset? We are not insusceptible to these, either, no matter how rational we tell ourselves we are. If we really want to make any difference in the way other people think and act, to make a difference in the world at large, we have to start with the ways we think and act, and that has to be an ongoing process. Accepting that god doesn't exist does not change who and what we are as human beings, it doesn't make us more rational, nor does it make us better people. As we ask for theists to find more existential and epistemic humility, we ought to strive toward that end, too. A scorched-earth policy benefits no one, no matter how right we believe ourselves to be.

Peter Boghossian and Philosophy of Religion - Take 2

Apparently my last post on Peter Boghossian, though winning me some positive feedback and some new friends, has also earned me a lot of enemies all of a sudden. With this follow-up post, I'd like to make some clarifications, particularly after seeing some of the response on Ed Brayton's post (which I am very grateful for).

Does Mr. B rely on pseudo-science and superstition in his arguments? No? Then why Deepak Chopra?

As I explain in the post, Chopra "spouts wisdom that's eaten up by his followers, yet is less wisdom than it is gibberish." Boghossian may not rely on pseudo-science and superstition as Chopra does, but that was not the point of comparison I was making. I could have perhaps compared Boghossian to political pundits for a more accurate contrast, but alas. Part of my decision to compare him to Chopra was to be provocative in a way that Dr. Boghossian very clearly likes to provoke others, and the outraged reaction of most of his supporters is interesting indeed. I continue to notice a prominent double-standard in that camp.

Is Carr aware of precisely how much utter nonsense has been written on an academic level?

I am, which is why my post did not offer a sweeping defense of all philosophers of religion. I listed a handful off the top of my head who I consider credible and intelligent. Boghossian's tweet maligned all who publish in philosophy of religion, and to challenge that I don't need to adopt the view that all academics are sensible adults, I only need to show that some are.

John Loftus has also written a response to remarks made by Jeff Lowder, Justin Schieber, and myself. John claims to be giving the charitable view, notes that he's gotten explanation from Boghossian, and elaborates that what Peter was actually saying was that "if no one accepted anything based on insufficient evidence this discipline [philosophy of religion] wouldn't even exist." However, Loftus goes on to say something notably different (italics are mine):

So people who do bad philosophy of religion without sufficient evidence should be disqualified to sit at the proverbial adult table, and if this were to take place then the discipline might not even exist. After all, if there was no bad philosophy then good philosophy wouldn't have to exist [...] What we would have instead is neurology, physics, astronomy, psychology, etc.

Now the problem with philosophy of religion is not a general one, but a distinction between good and bad philosophy of religion. I don't doubt that there is such a distinction, but the extent John takes this to strikes me as a bit hasty. What constitutes sufficient evidence for the claims made in philosophy of religion? There are such a wide range of them, spanning from ethics and causality to language and history, not to mention that different thinkers make different claims in each of these sub-fields. Loftus mentions that "scientifically uninformed philosophy" is what he and Boghossian are targeting, but even Daniel Dennett has agreed that there is no such thing as "philosophy-free science". Philosophy that goes against established science is problematic without a doubt, but science itself rests on certain philosophical assumptions. Loftus and Boghossian have an anti-metaphysical stance, which I can sympathize with, but that stance is not founded on philosophy-free science.

I have heard no other argument endeavoring to show that philosophy of religion would or could collapse into other fields of study, like in a game of Jenga, if only some magic piece were to be removed from it. As I pointed out to John in one of our exchanges, the nature of religious language seems like a part of religion that is best dealt with in the philosophy of religion. Anti-metaphysicalists claim that such language is senseless because it cannot be scientifically verified, but this is imposed to reform language rather than to explain it as it naturally exists. And as so many atheists like to say, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Thus, while I am somewhat sympathetic to the project of anti-metaphysicalists, I am also very hesitant.

What I truly don't understand is why the cry is for the demise of philosophy of religion rather than its reform. Even if it collapses into other disciplines, there will still be the philosophy of religion, albeit in a less organized and unstructured form. Questions of religious ethics will still arise, so will questions of religious psychology, religious history, religious language, etc. What will be the victory in tearing down the label of philosophy of religion and dispersing its contents that are not dismissed as meaningless? From this perspective, it really does seem that Boghossian, Loftus, and others want to set up an a priori win for atheism. I honestly find that hard to stomach. Like the ontological argument tries to define god into existence, we're just going to define atheism into victory?

There is still a big difference between saying the philosophy of religion is superfluous and saying that anyone who publishes in the field should not deserve to be at the "adult table". So I'd like to end with something I said to Loftus on his blog before he took pot shots at me being a college student without his degrees and eventually blocked me...

Before I wrote my review of Boghossian's book, I read up on him a lot. I listened to interviews with him, and I even did email him, albeit on a separate issue. I do consider him a bright guy, even if we disagree. Because I want to be charitable to him and take him seriously, I operate on the assumption that he means what he says, and if he makes a mistake or is misunderstood, he will clarify himself. But why everyone should be expected to privately email him regarding what he put out publicly and did not amend publicly with any corrections is beyond me. That is a very specific idea of what is charitable, yet I think it lays the responsibility entirely on the opposite side of where it should be.

This is not about being disrespectful to anyone, it is about being respectful enough not to sugarcoat someone's uncorrected statement or make excuses for them because I like them as a person. This is never an all-or-nothing game. The instant it becomes that it seems to me that we lose some of the credibility we claim for ourselves in trying to be objective and rational. However one feels about Boghossian, about the philosophy of religion, or about the unity of the atheist movement, I think that is far too high a price to pay.

[Edit: The Saga Continues]

Peter Boghossian: The Deepak Chopra of Atheism?

Peter Boghossian is an interesting figure. Back in January I wrote a review of his new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, which intends to teach non-believers how to lead the faithful out of their faith. I found myself torn between appreciating the ambitious motivations behind it and wanting to ridicule it mercilessly as a piece of pretentious choir-preaching. The methodology is well-researched, but the substance underlying it leaves much to be desired. Portraying faith as "pretending to know what you don't know" is not likely to help in deconverting most theists, but even worse are tactics like spreading unbelief through comic books and TV shows starring "Epistemology Knights" and "Faith Monsters".

I feel like I achieved a nice compromise in my review by being generally charitable, yet directing criticisms where necessary. After all, Boghossian's wilder remarks are not the overall tone of the book, and perhaps playing into the propaganda game is what will be the most effective against the actual disinformation campaigns, like those commandeered by Ray Comfort and Eric Hovind. I was prepared to give Dr. Boghossian the benefit of a doubt - that is, until I came across his Twitter feed.

Agnosticism is arrogant. It asserts there's enough evidence to conclude that god's existence is possible.

This comment is something I wouldn't be surprised to hear from Richard Dawkins or Lawrence Krauss, or anyone who isn't well versed in philosophy. Peter is a philosophy professor, though, which obviously means philosophy is, you know, his job. In A Manual for Creating Atheists, he specifically draws attention to the philosophical field of epistemology, or the study of knowledge, as an important part of understanding religious beliefs and leading people out of them. It seems like Dr. Boghossian should be quite aware that the evidentialism he endorses throughout his work is just one epistemological theory among several. It seems like he should also be aware of the difference between belief and knowledge, how that plays into probability and possibility, and how those all relate to the distinction between atheism and agnosticism.

For a long time now, philosophers have commonly understood knowledge as justified true belief. In the 20th century, this definition was called into question by famous experiments establishing what has become known as the Gettier problem. Some have attempted to move forward by switching focus from justification to warrant, but the main point here is that knowledge is seen as a subset of belief. To know something is to have a certain belief that is true and justified, or true and warranted. On evidentialism, the more and better evidence one has for a belief, the more justified they are in holding that belief. However, if someone has no evidence for a belief, it does not mean what they believe is impossible, it merely means they are unjustified in holding that belief.

Agnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, for knowledge, and the prefix a-, meaning without. An agnostic is someone who doesn't claim to know something. This is different from an atheist in that an atheist is someone without theism, where theism is belief in god. Thus, while an agnostic says she doesn't 'know' whether or not god exists, an atheist says she doesn't 'believe' god exists. One view is about knowledge, the other is about belief, and so while they are separate in meaning, they aren't mutually exclusive. I often call myself an agnostic atheist because I don't claim to be certain that there is no god, but I think the probabilities swing far enough that I am justified in doubting the existence of god.

Evidence does not establish possibility or impossibility, especially not when we're talking about logical possibility. Scientific studies even do not rule out sheer possibilities, they either support or don't support a hypothesis. Likewise, the reasons one may have for being an agnostic may not have to do with the quantity or quality of the evidence at all. You might see the god concept as so confused and incoherent that you simply can't pronounce to have knowledge on it either way. If, like me, you accept that evidence can't ever give us absolute certainty, or such strong claims about possibilities and impossibilities, you might be an agnostic because you think there are other considerations we don't or can't have access to.

It seems like a professional philosopher should know better than to make such an incendiary and naive remark. However, just the other day, Dr. Boghossian again posted something at least as absurd to his Twitter feed:

Being published in the philosophy of religion should disqualify one from sitting at the adult table.

Many of the most devastating critiques of religion have come from philosophers of religion. The field may have a majority of religious believers in it, but there have been quite a few notable atheists published in philosophy of religion journals, too, such as J.L. Mackie, Paul Draper, Ted Drange, Graham Oppy, Erik Wielenberg, Stephen Maitzen, and William Rowe. Theistic philosophers have also done their share of worthwhile criticism of theistic arguments, among which would be Tim and Lydia McGrew for their attack on fine-tuning, as well as Wes Morriston for his work against the cosmological argument.

These philosophers who Boghossian would exclude from "the adult table" are far more deserving of those seats than Peter and (many of) his New Atheist buds. I say this not just because of Boghossian's childish behavior, but also because each of them writes on an academic level that just is miles above the others. Many of the arguments against god proliferated in atheist circles today are owed to these philosophers of religion. Dr. Boghossian frankly doesn't know what he's talking about, and his principal objection seems to stem solely from the fact that "religion" is part of the philosophy of religion name.

I've seen a few comments on Facebook calling Boghossian "our version" of young earth creationists, saying that he almost seems like a viral marketing gimmick for the God's Not Dead film. To this I'll add that he's like the Deepak Chopra of atheism. Chopra is a new age 'guru' who spouts wisdom that's eaten up by his followers, yet is less wisdom than it is gibberish. In similar fashion, Boghossian plays to an audience that he knows, one that disdains anything and everything remotely connected to religion. These "cultured despisers" of religion, as Schleiermacher once called them, are quite happy to agree with whatever fits the us vs. them narrative they've constructed, along with its clear emphasis on the inherent and unavoidable evils of religion, while little things like arguments, facts, and honest dialogue take a backseat.

The annoying thing is that men like Boghossian thrive off of the criticisms sent their way. In their minds, it validates what they have to say, it exposes 'anger' in their critics (a frequent theme in Peter's Twitter feed), and it serves as an opportunity to circle the wagons yet again. As they say, bad press is better than no press, and Mr. Atheist Manual is doing all he can to elicit controversy and stir the pot. One can only imagine where he will go next. Maybe he'll found his own atheist scholarly journal where only his favorite kinds of atheists will be allowed to publish, then sweepingly declare anyone not publishing there must sit at the kids' table.

Just as we denounce Chopra for his juvenile nonsense, we should denounce even fellow atheists for theirs. In the past, non-theists have done well in taking Alain de Botton, S.E. Cupp, and others to task for some of their overly-generous statements regarding religion. We should be equally willing to critically examine statements that are so poisonous in their characterization of belief and faith. I don't think Boghossian is helping anyone but himself in his simplistic treatments of complex philosophical issues.

[Edit: read the follow-up and the latest fiasco in the ongoing 'debate'.]

How Not to Defend the Moral Argument for God (Part 2)

In my previous post, I discussed a few problems I see in the second premise of the moral argument for god's existence, as popularly formulated by William Lane Craig. I'll rehash the argument here again, for the sake of clarity:

1. If god does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, god exists.

I chose to begin my critique with the second premise because I wished to point out that even if one does believe in objective moral values, Craig and Koukl fail to adequately justify 2. Of course, if one accepts the second premise, as I do, it doesn't matter much how it is justified by apologists. In a debate, however, it is incumbent upon the speaker to support their premises. Were I engaged in a formal debate on this subject, I would grant the second premise while drawing attention to its poor justification, if only to show that the non-theist can better account for the reality of objective moral values. Thus, in this second part, I will focus on the first premise. In my opinion, this is the best way to deal with the moral argument for god.

Let's say, hypothetically, that we are ethical intuitionists, like Dr. Craig. Remember that the moral argument deals with moral ontology, not moral epistemology. In our hypothetical scenario, we believe that we can apprehend moral truths, and we believe that these truths are intrinsic in nature. The atrocities of Nazism are intrinsically wrong, we would claim, and by definition, intrinsic values are objective, not being reliant on any relations to other things. They would be wrong even if the Nazis had won the war and brainwashed or killed everyone. This is practically the spitting image of the kind of morality Craig professes to have when he talks of the Holocaust being wrong "even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them." [1]

What objections could be raised against this stance? Craig could argue that objective values have to be grounded in something external to human beings - god, in his view. Yet this response would seem to ignore the meaning of intrinsic value. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines intrinsic as

belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing. [2]

If we say that human life is an intrinsic good, normally we mean that human life is good in and of itself. It is good independently of any opinion or belief to the contrary. Dr. Craig asserts that human beings do have intrinsic value, [3] but also claims that moral values are grounded in the character of god. [4] This appears to be a contradiction in terms, because if values come from god, then they cannot, by definition, be intrinsic, since they are determined by something outside of the thing itself. Rape is wrong not in-and-of itself, but because it is not in accordance with god's character. In a response to Luke Muehlhauser, Craig explains that he sees intrinsic value in a bit of a different way:

...persons have intrinsic value in that they are not merely means to be used for some end but are to be treated as ends in themselves. So we might well ask, "But why are human persons intrinsically valuable?" and the answer will be because God is personal. [5]

Craig's understanding of intrinsic value is arguably weaker in contrast to my own, supported by dictionaries and countless philosophers and ethicists. It is particularly weaker in how it addresses the view of objective values as ensuring that "something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." [6] In that "anybody", Dr. Craig makes an unstated exception for his personal god, and what guarantee do we have that god would never change his mind about moral issues? According to most strains of Christian theology, god's moral prescriptions on unclean foods and circumcision were altered - overturned in every practical sense of the word - by the time of Jesus. As a divine command theorist, Craig believes that god's moral commands flow from his character. But what does it mean to suggest that the circumcision and food laws were effectively neutered once Jesus came around? If god's commands loosened up, does that mean his character changed too?

The Euthyphro dilemma asks, 'is something good because god commands it, or does god command something because it is good?' Apologists frequently retort that the answer is neither; something is good when it is in keeping with god's character or nature. However, we can rephrase the dilemma as follows: 'does god inform his character, or does his character inform him?' If the former is true, we fall back into the original dilemma, because by informing his character, god determines what is moral. If the latter is true, then there is something over which god has no authority, and this challenges the omnipotence and sovereignty of god. In addition, it simply will not suffice to define goodness as consistent with god's character, because we don't know god's character. Even if goodness is an essential property of his character, we still have no actual information about that property.

Not only does moral epistemology look troubling on the theistic side, but moral ontology seems unjustifiable, too. Even if we set aside the incoherency of claiming that good flows from god's character, useless as it is in defining actual goodness, there remains the problem of scripture and reason that argues against an unchanging character. As well, if intrinsic value exists, in the fullest, most objective definition, it will be accessible apart from the existence of any god, since it only has to do with the things in themselves, and not any relations to other things. 

Craig could also possibly object to the reliability of our intuitions, if there is no god. How can we trust our faculties, he might ask. This is just as much a problem for theists as for non-theists, though. See my previous blog entry on the problem of induction. There is no reason to assume that the existence of a god would make it any more likely that we would have uninhibited access to our sensory apparatuses, and there are good reasons to suspect that, at the very least, natural selection would favor reliable sense organs over unreliable ones that might lead to our deaths.

Even so, I must admit I do not subscribe either to intuitionism or to intrinsic value. These views are capable of countering the moral argument, though, I believe, and they are close enough to Craig's own standpoint that they would not be easily rebutted.

Alonzo Fyfe's theory of desire utilitarianism is the most persuasive, realistic, and meaningful moral theory I have yet run across. Moral statements describe behaviors as well as relationships, typically relationships between certain desires. When we think about why we act or behave in some way, desire is always the reason. You want to keep your job, so you choose to act appropriately at work. You want someone to like you, so you choose to behave positively around them. You want to be in the favor of the god you worship, so you choose to adhere to its will. According to desire utilitarianism, a behavior is "good" if it fulfills certain desires, and "bad" if it thwarts certain desires. Note, the focus is not on maximizing desire fulfillment, but on seeing that certain desires are met. I say certain desires because there are some desires that would be wrong to fulfill. These wrong desires are ones that, if carried into action, would thwart the desires of others for selfish reasons. To say that murder is wrong in desire utilitarianism means that it is wrong because it thwarts the desires of the victim, the victim’s family, and the larger society that wishes to live without the threat of murder.

Moral evaluations focus on malleable desires, those that can be changed by social forces like praise and condemnation. In the example above, the murderer commits the first thwarting of desire, for the purpose of fulfilling his own selfish interests. We can judge that the murderer's desire is harmful to others rather than fulfilling their desires, and so we can determine that it is morally good to condemn murder and appropriate for law enforcement to prevent murderers from killing. The desires of the murderer are thwarted because he has (or will) "cast the first stone", and because more, greater desires will be fulfilled by thwarting his.

Although desire utilitarianism rejects moral absolutism, it does provide for moral realism and moral universalism. The question of whether or not a desire will fulfill other desires has an objective answer, and these relationships between desires are part of the real world. Different persons may hold different desires, but this does not affect the objectivity of desire utilitarianism, since it takes these differences into account. We can say that a claim is universally moral when, after considering all desires involved, we see that it fulfills more, greater desires than would be thwarted. For example, a humanitarian desire can be called universally moral because it tends to fulfill more, greater desires than it thwarts.

Does this theory meet Craig's criterion for objective moral values as meaning that "something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so"? I would argue that it does. A desire is either fulfilled or thwarted, and that will remain true in spite of any beliefs to the contrary. But what about Craig's scenario - would the Holocaust be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and successfully brainwashed and/or killed all dissidents? Desire utilitarianism can look at the mountains of good desires thwarted by Nazism, as well as the oceans of bad desires it fulfilled and would continue to fulfill to reach such a hypothetical point, and can offer a resounding "yes". 

Contrast this moral approach, based on the intentions and actions of the Nazis, with the approach advocated by proponents of the moral argument, who believe the Holocaust was wrong essentially because it was inconsistent with the vague, undefined nature of god. A god with a history of genocide (Joshua 6:21, 1 Samuel 15:2-3), slavery (Exodus 21:20-21, Leviticus 25:44-46, Colossians 3:22), and the promise of eternal, unimaginable torment for those who don't see things his way (Matthew 3:12, 13:41-42, Mark 9:47-48).

The moral argument for god fails to justify its ontological claims, and actually seems to strengthen the case for secular morality with the messy and inadequate defense that typically accompanies it. Unless one is already predisposed to the views associated with the argument, it is unlikely to be appealing.


[For more on desire utilitarianism:
Alonzo Fyfe, What is Desire Utilitarianism?
Luke Muehlhauser, The Ultimate Desirism F.A.Q.
Luke Muehlhauser, CPBD 005: Alonzo Fyfe - Desire Utilitarianism]



1. W.L. Craig, The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality (1997).
2. Merriam-Webster, entry for intrinsic.
3. W.L. Craig, Q&A #61: Abortion and Presidential Politics.
4. W.L. Craig, Q&A #208: Sam Harris on Objective Moral Values and Duties.
5. Luke Muehlhauser, Craig on Intrinsic Value, Common Sense Atheism (2009).
6. See source #1.

How Not to Defend the Moral Argument for God (Part 1)

The moral argument for the existence of god has been around for quite some time, and has faced plenty of criticism since its inception. However, the form of it commonly used in debate by William Lane Craig and other apologists is often met with unfortunately weak responses, despite significantly lacking in support of its premises. The argument is usually stated as follows:

1. If god does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, god exists.

This argument carries a hefty burden of proof because of the second premise. If objective moral values don't exist, then the moral argument fails. Yet it isn't up to the atheist or skeptic to prove that these objective values are not real, it's up to the apologist to justify his second premise. Unless reason is given to think that 2 is correct, the opponent of the moral argument is well within rights to object that there is no grounds for assuming the existence of objective values. The only way 2 could be justified is if it is (i) such an observed fact of the natural world that it can be considered a given, or if (ii) the apologist endeavors to demonstrate it through another argument.

An example of a premise that could be accepted on (i) would be something like "Socrates was a man", from the famous Socrates syllogism (1. All men are mortal, 2. Socrates was a man, 3. Therefore, Socrates was mortal). Enough people are familiar with the story of Socrates, and there is enough evidence from history describing the figure as male, or human, that this premise can be accepted as a given. There is no need for the argument's proponent to demonstrate it, since its truth is readily discernible to anyone who might wish to check. Another example of (i) could be the premise "All men are mortal", as it has many centuries of observation, death records, and the like in support of it. One could say that premises of the type (i) variety might be called obvious.

Many non-theist opponents have objected to the moral argument on the basis of conflicting opinions on morality. Theodore Drange made this move in his debate with Craig, as did a caller named Bill on a recent Unbelievable podcast episode addressing questions to apologist Greg Koukl. In my view, this is a weak response for exactly the reason theists give: differences of perspective on moral matters do not rule out the possibility of objective values. As Koukl notes, we may each see different colors on an object, but it doesn't mean there is no color there. More importantly, though, the moral argument does not deal with moral epistemology, or how we know what moral values are, but only deals with moral ontology, or the perceived reality of moral values. It will not refute the argument to raise examples of immoral acts in scripture or in history, because the argument centers around the existence of objective values, not the content of them.

Still, the second premise of the moral argument is anything but obvious. All that we generally consider as obvious - the shape of the earth, human mortality, gravity, the identity of Socrates - has a wealth of evidence behind it. It isn't simply that we feel the earth is round, or we strongly suspect that humans die, or we have no reason to think that gravity isn't real. It's that time after time, we've observed these phenomena around us, going back a long, long, long while ago in history. It's that experiments have been conducted to help verify the truth of these ideas, and we have held them up against the backdrop of prior knowledge and existing theories to see what best fits the picture as we've ascertained it thus far. Can any of us honestly say that objective moral values are obvious in this sense? What observations have we made about them, what experiments have we done, how have they fared against additional information?

Funny enough, the obviousness of objective moral values can also be challenged by sort of reversing the moral opinions objection. A majority does not make an obvious truth. It could be contended that even if every man, woman, and child on Earth were to think morality is objective, this would do little on its own, apart from the kind of evidence just mentioned. After all, Dr. Craig makes a very similar point in practically all of his debates on the existence of god; he wants morality capable of saying that anti-Semitism is wrong "even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them." [1] While he may rest this on theistic assumptions, the principle behind it should still hold true, that the prevalence of an opinion does not tell us anything about whether or not the opinion is true. For that we need other means of evaluation.

So we have good reason to think that (i) cannot be used to justify the second premise of the moral argument. What about (ii)? In the Unbelievable episode referenced above, Greg Koukl asserts his belief that our agreement on certain moral issues is evidence that we share a moral sense or a moral intuition about right and wrong. Our deeply felt general repulsion to the idea of torturing young children is, in his view, reason to think that it isn't just wrong for us, but wrong for everyone at any time, any place, and in any circumstance. Justin Brierly, the host, explains that he can't imagine a situation in which it would be right for someone to torture a young child, insinuating that it therefore must never be right. Craig has echoed these sentiments in debates like the one he had with Professor John Shook. During the Q&A segment, Craig defended the moral argument by saying:

The moral argument is an appeal to our moral experience, and so it's not just a matter of liking the conclusion or not... I think that in our moral experience we do apprehend moral oughts, we ought to do this or we ought not to do that, we apprehend a distinction between good and evil... we ought to pay attention to our moral experience and take it seriously, and if we do, then I think we'll see that the moralist is wrong when he says that moral values are just relative to individuals, societies, or whatever... [2]

I don't know that any relativist would deny that most human beings form moral judgments. What non-objectivists seem to dispute is whether those moral judgments correspond to anything substantial or not. Thus, moral experience exists even to the relativist - it's only a question of what significance it should be given.

Craig agrees that the Nazis believed themselves to be on the side of right and goodness, [3] but he thinks that their moral experience misled them. He ventures into the territory of moral epistemology in his debates to emphasize the strength of objective as opposed to subjective values, but his moral argument can't tell us anything about what god would condemn or praise. What reason does Craig have for preferring the moral experience of modern Christians to that of the German Christians who participated in the Holocaust? What of the medieval Christians like Martin Luther, who wrote the infamous propaganda piece On the Jews and Their Lies, encouraging the demolition of Jewish businesses, synagogues, houses, and schools, as well as forbidding the Jews from preaching and having access to their religious texts?

Craig, Koukl, and Brierly all seem to belong to the ethical intuitionist camp. Ethical intuitionism is the view that moral truths can be known by intuition, without resort to inference. Presumably one's own intuitive sense is the one that matters most - we generally don't have access to others' intuitions - posing a problem of consideration for others. What exactly resolves conflicts between different intuitions under the ethical intuitionist view? It isn't altogether clear. The irony is that this looks an awful lot like subjectivism in denial of itself. We each have our own intuitions... but if yours conflict with mine, well you're just wrong. Why? Because I intuit it! This may be closer to the truth than you think, considering how Craig responded to Sam Harris during the Q&A segment of their debate, in the following exchange:

Harris: This is the kind of morality that you get out of divine command theory that, again, offers no retort to the Jihadist other than, "Sorry buster, you happen to have the wrong god."

Craig: But that’s exactly your retort, Sam, that God has not issued such a command, and therefore, you’re not morally obligated to do it.

Note that Craig doesn't correct Harris' description of his view or even offer any defense at all. He simply tries to turn the question back on Harris. 

Ethical intuitionism might also commit the is-ought fallacy. David Hume articulated the fallacy as a response to early intuitionists like Samuel Clarke, who thought that feelings, not reason, guide us to moral truths. Hume distinguished between the passions and reason, and argued that deriving an "ought" from an "is" must be accompanied by a line of argument connecting the two. In other words, it is fallacious to use a fact of the world to insist on how something should be, unless a rational explanation draws the two together. To Hume, Clarke's feelings were a fact of his experience that he adopted as moral truths without any legitimate reason.

Predictably, intuitionists think they avoid this problem. Brian Zamulinski, an evolutionary intuitionist (yes, you read that right), defends his beliefs in the excerpt below.

Inference is an intellectual movement from proposition to proposition. Apprehension is the acquisition of a belief in response to a state of affairs. Our ability to apprehend states of affairs is not fundamentally an ability to make inferences, no matter what sorts of inferences. It is an ability to see that such and such is the case. With evolutionary intuitionism, we intuitively apprehend the fact, say, that torture is wrong. We do not infer the belief that torture is wrong from other propositions. Since inference is not involved, the impossibility of inferring an "ought" from an "is" is not relevant. [4]

We draw an inference any time we form a conclusion based on what we know or what we assume to be true. To look at the fact that all men are mortal, that Socrates is a man, and then conclude that Socrates is mortal, is to draw an inference from existing knowledge and experience. Zamulinski's idea that we apprehend states of affairs without resorting to inferences is a bold and unsubstantiated claim. We make use of inference for knowledge acquisition in many other areas of life, so why assume that morality is an exception? Even if it seems like we apprehend moral truths with no consideration of known facts or existing beliefs, the long-term influences on our thinking from culture and other venues make it extremely unlikely that this impression is accurate. It all looks rather convenient, really. Intuition is just 'seeing things as they are', like Alvin Plantinga's faith is so properly basic that it needs no justification.

Methinks this is why Koukl and company argue so strongly about grounding moral values, because their intuitions are in need of grounding. If we intuitively apprehend moral truths, how are we able to do this aside from inference and reason? Where do these moral truths come from, if not from the natural world around us? The only way for these theists to convince themselves that their intuitions aren't just subjective is to attach them to a god who affirms what they feel. However, as we'll see in the next part, the first premise of the moral argument runs into plenty of problems of its own.




1. W.L. Craig, The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality (1997).
2. John Shook v. William Lane Craig Debate: "Does God Exist?" YouTube.com.
3. See source 1.
4. B. Zamulinski, Evolutionary Intuitionism (2007), p. 112.