Well, late one evening, as is my wont, I was utilizing the random blog jumper button. You know the one, the little arrow in the top right hand corner of the page that appears when you are logged in to see your blog if it is hosted on WordPress.com. Well, while doing so, I stumbled over a post that purported to show Christianity in a “different” light. By the word “different”, I mean that they were trying to show that Christianity was a rational, logical religion that should be believed because the evidence extant proves it to be true.
Well, everyone who knows me in real life knows that I make a distinction between two types of people. (At least when it comes to the religious type of person.) The first group are people who realize that their religion is a product of personal belief and faith and profess as much. The other is more akin to the fundamentalist who says that Logic, Reason, and Evidence shows their religion (and Denomination and Sect) to be the One True Way.
So, I guess what this should show the reader is that I have nothing against a religious Christian. I do have something against a religious Christian zealot who tarnishes her integrity by not claiming that her belief is based in faith.
Which brings me to the subject of this post. I made a comment over at Artist Thinker, a Blog that is dedicated primarily to Christian topics and apologetics. However, one of the posts there seemed to be addressed to the readers at large, and I posted a comment to it. The reason for my comment has it’s basis in what I talk about on this blog, especially when it comes to critical thinking skills. Specifically, what I referenced was the Error of Bifurcation. (Now, let me see if I learned how to do block quoting…)
“The fact of the matter is that either the Bible is the Word of God, or It’s a pack of lies. You have to choose one way or the other for the Bible and every document that claims to come from God. There is no middle ground. If one part of these books is a lie, then how could you possibly trust any of the rest of it?”
Here’s the point that got me all riled up. How, indeed, should we trust a book if one part of it is proven to be false? My, if just one itty, bitty, little bit of it is proven to be a lie, well, then, by Golly! we should chuck the whole thing out of the window! I mean, after all, we know how to do eisegeisis, do we not? We know linguistics, semiotics, the majority of the original language of the written portfolios and autographs, have scientific validation of the historical events that are portrayed within the documents, and so on. But, June wants everyone to believe that if just one, little, itty bit of it is proven false, then the whole thing must be thrown out, rather than just looking at the historical, social, and cultural ramifications and implications of the passage in question. Not to mention that as of yet, there exists no guidelines for telling when the Bible digresses into allegory and when it is relating factual evidence.
Well, June, here is a whole list of inconsistencies, errors, and outright falsehoods of the Bible. Yes, I will admit that the author was stretching a little bit here and there, but the Bible, if it is inerrant, should not get fundamental things wrong, such as the fact that the Bible says that rabbits chew their cud.
Be that as it may. June responded with this quote:
“And the inclusion of a wrong book or the exclusion of a right book would not amount to a pack of lies? What could you really trust anymore? Is God so incapable of perserving His own Word and confusing us on something so vital as the truth? The few small mistakes that have slipped by have been discovered and amended such as 1 John 5:7. Is this not God preserving His Word?”
Well, as we can see, there are far more than a “few small mistakes”. Also, the one thing that I would like to point out is that there is a little bit of ignorance on the part of most lay people about the history of the formation of the Bible. Some of the books that were considered Canon in the first and second centuries are no longer around, and also books were included at later dates that may have even more recent genesis. This is another nail in the coffin of the Doctrine of Inerrancy.
More was said:
“Your Ethics and Reasoning from the Renaissance served to produce such things as racism which tainted early Reformation leaders such as Martin Luther, who really should have known that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and literally by blood since each and every one of us descended from two people.”
I’m sorry, but when did ethics ever present a situation where racism was considered good? I can not think of any. Reason, especially reason that strives to base itself in empirical premises first, also has never promoted racism. However, we can see ample evidence of racism in the Bible, and in many different theologies that are based in Biblical thought. The whole reason why the South (of the United States, that is) struggled against abolition is because they used verses to promote the institution of slavery! Philosophy, especially that philosophy as espoused by the Objectivists, (say what you want about them, as I find some of there logic fallacious as well, but Ayn Rand was right about this) says that “Every man has a right to his own life”. That means that slavery, racism, sexism, and other prejudices that are not based within the content of character of the individual or her actions are ethically wrong. I must respectfully disagree with you on this point, June, as it seems you are utilizing the Straw Man Argument, wherein you set up a factually inaccurate portrayal of the opposing viewpoint in order to bolster your own premise. Your litany is not true.
Again, from the Comments page to the article:
“It also produced evolution which bolstered claims of superiority and relegated “lesser races” as non-humans and even women as lesser beings.”
Well, I wished you would have read my post calling for creationists to submit proof of special creation. As I’ve stated before, there exists proof for evolution by the truckloads. However, most fundamentalist Christians either do not understand the fact of evolution, or they do not understand the theory of evolution, or they intentionally misunderstand all aspects of it. While some people may have misused the theory of evolution, that does not negate the theory itself. People have also misused the theory of magnetism to have others believe that they possessed supernatural abilities. Does this mean that the theory of electromagnetism is wrong? However, to concentrate upon the evolution side of the debate, you also employed the term “superior”. Within an evolutionary context, “superior” only refers to those species that have adapted to their ecological niche can propogate faster than other species. This means the most evolutionary “advanced” species on the planet would be some type of microbe, and most scientists will agree to this. Only madmen, psychopaths, and megalomaniacs have abandoned reason in order to use evolution as their justification for wholesale murder.
Continuing with the statement:
“Such human reasoning gave rise to Nazism and Fascism and Marxism, poxes on history that have scarred many and continue to do so. Don’t believe me? Think such people as Che are to be revered? Well, why don’t we ask the hundreds of Cubans who risk life and limb to make it to this evil nation of America with all it’s evil capitalist freedoms? Are they not the direct benefactors of Che’s ideology? And that chaste man of the people Fidel Castro most definitely did not make it on the list of some of the most wealthy leaders in the world.”
For some reason, I think in June’s earnestness for the sake of argument, June became convinced that I was a communist. I don’t know how I went from just pointing out a logical error in the argument to being a cheerleader for Communism. However, more to the point, June insists that such politics and methodologies such as Fascism and Communism (the Nazis, despite the word “socialist” in their name, were very much a fascist state) can be laid directly at the feet of human reason. Well, I would propose that it would depend on the connotation of the word. I use the word Reason to mean a well ordered, rational approach to the problems of life wherein as much evidence as can be found before forming logical arguments. Basically, I’m using the word reason in the same way that a scientist or a philosopher may use the term. From the way June derides the term, however, I suspect that June’s interpretation of the word is more along the lines of “Whatever a man may think”.
Again, from the comments section:
“By the way, you obviously failed to read Part 2 in this series called Does God Exist? — The Philosophical Argument. If you had, you would have seen how I show how our own reasoning of ethics can be tainted and unreliable. You have skipped to the end of the book and consequently are confused about the ending.”
I will admit that I did not read the article you wrote. I have since rectified that problem, and think that I can succinctly summarize what you presented in this article: For the greatest happiness, there must be a moral order. If this moral order is found that engenders happiness, then it must have been made by someone. This someone is God. Even in this statement you allow several logical fallacies. You beg the question by stating that people are only happy in following rules. You beg the question that these rules do exist, as well as assert an unproven premise. You also beg the question again in the following statement by asserting that the rules had to be made by someone. Not only that, but there is the error of Bifurcation again, as there exist many different possibilities about the formation of these rules and even how these rules are perceived. Your final unproven assertion is that this frame of rules was codified by an unknown and undefined term such as “God”. (That’s a completely different debate that’s been raging for centuries, though.) There are many other methods and arguments that could have been employed in your apologetics for the existence of God, why did you choose this one?
The one thing that I want to point out here is that if I’m wrong, or presented fallacious evidence, or employed errors in my reasoning, then I will be all to happy to admit to the fact of my error and correct it immediately. This also extends to turns of phrase that I may have mis-stated. The point is this: Can you do the same?
After this point, June asks about a personage that I named in the comments section; a certain Mr. Farrell Till, current editor of the Skeptical Review. I think the link should provide all the evidence needed to assay June’s feelings on the topic. This is what was written:
“Question on Farrell Till: If he was a preacher for TEN YEARS as you have stated, then why did he have to be told to dig deeper into the Bible? Isn’t the nature of a preacher the fact that he has already studied the Bible? What were his sermons like if he didn’t dig deep into the Bible until later? They must have been pathetic flops based on his own assumptions and reasoning.
This all just seems soooo….odd.”
I find it odd that a person would engage in ad hominem attacks and character assassination before even knowing something of the subject matter at hand.
This leads me to my final point: I do abhor the fundamentalist. They resort to doctrines that are not true, can patently be falsified (again, in the scientific context), and must use Apologetics that have been disproved time and time again throughout history. A true person of faith will admit to being just that, a person of Faith. They know they believe what they believe because it is an article of belief and faith. If more religious people would just say this up front, I do believe the world would be a much better place.
The Cathedral Arctic 