April 1, 2011
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Prominent Christian apologists convert to atheism?
Intro:
Christian apologists from around the world gathered in San Diego to discuss honestly their misgivings about defending the faith. It was an unprecedented, no-holds-barred, "skeptifest" of Biblical proportions. It had been long supposed that Christians could stand up to any intellectual attacks and hence had nothing to fear from brandishing their confidence for all to see. Everyone was encouraged to get their most skeptical thoughts and doubts "out there" and see what others had to say. By some accounts, from some of my atheist friends who were allowed to attend, this apparently snow-balled into mass apostasy. I'm still a little skeptical, but I've pulled some intriguing quotes from the transcript. Take a look...
At first everyone was a bit squeamish to speak and a few offered some rather vague random points of contention that really didn't matter that much to the big picture. Finally, William Lane Craig just blurted out why he'd apparently stopped trusting the Holy Spirit:
Of course, anyone (or, at least any sort of theist) can claim to have a self-authenticating witness of God to the truth of his religion. [...] they've just had some emotional experience...
Dead silence. Um...that's the HOLY FREAKING SPIRIT you are talking about. And yet Richard Swinburne cheered Craig on and was remarkably sarcastic noting (with air quotes no less) we'd never want to be forced into certain absurdities based on that kind of evidence:
...if it seems to me Poseidon exists, then it is good evidence that Poseidon exists.
He had the whole crowd rolling with laughter since they all knew that the Greek pantheon had a long history of success in the hearts and minds of ancient Greeks. Were they really going there? Maybe I'm missing something.
Staunch evidentialist, Lydia McGrew, wanted to turn the conversation to more tangible matters and get the ball rolling on discussing her lack of confidence in the resurrection of Jesus:
Well of course the prior probability is very low and we all know that. [...]
There’s a most unfortunate passage by G. K. Chesterton in which he says, “If my Apple woman, the woman who sells me apples tells me that she saw a miracle I should believe her. I believe her about apples so I should believe her about miracles.” That’s a paraphrase; it’s not an exact quotation.
I really wish Chesterton hadn’t said that because that’s just wrong as an approach. You don’t just automatically say, “Oh, somebody says they saw a miracle, I’m going to buy it.” You have to have much stronger evidence than that.
Indeed. I can agree with that. Triablogger, Steve Hays immediately piped up with three pertinent examples of the kind of evidence we would need to justify various kinds of similar extraordinary claims:
[In reference to having an alien spaceship] On the face of it, I could discharge my burden of proof by showing you the spacecraft. Of course, you might insist on having it properly inspected (to eliminate a hoax).
So what evidence would I need to prove that I own this unique coin? [...] Ideally, the only evidence I'd need to prove that I own this unique coin is the coin itself. My ability to produce the coin upon request. Maybe you'd demand that the coin be authenticated. Fine.
...suppose I call you up and tell you I've just won the lottery (and on the first occasion I've ever bought a ticket). Surely that's an extraordinary claim. Naturally you're skeptical, so I invite you over to my house, where you see with your own eyes both my ticket and the newspaper reporting the winning numbers. I'd say that would be sufficient for you to rationally believe that I've won the lottery.
So it was a case of a highly improbable event that required evidence of a[n] admittedly powerful [...] kind in order to be rationally believed.
I can't help but note that it was almost as though the words of atheist, Richard Carrier, were on the minds of all those in attendance:
If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world.
Recognizing of course that Jesus didn't do this, Craig spoke up again to say what had been weighing on everyone's mind since the conference began:
...you are thinking, “Well, goodness, if believing in God is a matter of weighing all of these sorts of arguments, then how can anybody know whether God exists? You'd have to be a philosopher or a scientist to figure out whether God exists!” In fact, I agree with you. A loving God would not leave it up to us to figure out by our own ingenuity and cleverness whether or not he exists.
People were clearly shocked. And it got everyone lingering on the problem of evil. Hays spoke up again to point out that the long standing explanations for evil from Calvinism and Arminianism both suck:
...it sounds bad [...] to say that God predestined sin and evil. However, it also sounds bad to say that God allows sin and evil.
Everyone was dismayed by this. How could they all have been defending such bad explanations for evil all of this time? How in the world had Christian apologetics kept up with it? They weren't all that stupid and/or delusion were they!?! No one especially wanted to hear atheist, John Loftus, say, "I told you so." Even though their faiths seemed to be cracking under the weight of their collective doubts, they all agreed no one wanted to hear that guy gloat.
Hays had clearly been thinking things through and gave everyone an astute analogy to help explain where most everyone had gone wrong with their apologetic sensibilities:
An ufologist is often a smart, sophisticated individual, deeply committed to secular science. [...] And while it’s easy to make fun of ufology, an astute ufologist has a well-lubricated answer to all the stock objections. [...] Conspiracy theories are the snare of bright minds. They have just enough suggestive, tantalizing evidence to be appealing, but never enough evidence to be compelling. [...] As far as I'm concerned, the issue is not how long it would take for a legend to develop. Anyone can write anything at any time.Almost too proud of himself for how well he'd explained things, something clearly snapped in his mind. Hays collapsed on the floor in front of everyone and started mumbling almost incoherently. It seemed he was talking about himself though he couldn't bring himself to even speak in the first person:
...he indulges in so many ad hominem attacks [...] which includes that constitutional incapacity for self criticism in its judgmental criticism of others which emboldens him to openly expose his emotional insecurities, oblivious to the disconnect between the image he is laboring to project and what is really coming through.
It also seemed that he was admitting that all of his previous apologetic efforts could not be said to:
...move us from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge.
He'd realized that too many people had been wondering if Hays was:
...really that dense, or if he is just playing dumb to advance his agenda.
And whether or not it was always just a "rhetorical tactic:"
...to impose an all-or-nothing dilemma on the reader.
Hays was okay apparently and someone nursed him back to health in a corner of the room as the conference moved on. Was he really talking about himself?!? We may never know.
The next day after Hays had recomposed himself, he was overheard talking to fellow Triablogger, Jason Engwer, about all the horrible things that he'd said about agnostic, Ed Babinski, to get out of the force of the case in Ed's "The Cosmology of the Bible" chapter in "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails." Hays finally admitted it was implausible to dismiss all the evidence that the Bible embraces a false cosmology:
Mixed metaphors are mutually inconsistent if taken literally, but a wide variety of metaphors can and do figurate the very same concept.
So I guess they did understand the criticism after all to all their hairsplitting? Not sure.
Elsewhere, William Lane Craig was overheard discussing the many universes hypothesis with Robin Collins:
We appear then to be confronted with two alternatives: posit either a cosmic Designer or an exhaustively random, infinite number of other worlds. Faced with these options, is not theism just as rational a choice as multiple worlds?
They both agreed they hadn't taken the hypothesis seriously enough in the past and that we really weren't in any position to decide between two rational options. I didn't think Christians were capable of agnosticism on that issue...
Near the end of the conference there were a lot of tears shed and everyone was looking around at each other a bit anxiously, thankful they had not brought any babies to test their new atheist appetites on or any children to dismember to make sure they were made of all atoms. Triablogger, Paul Manata went around poking walls, waiving his arms up and down, and testing various places on the floor to check on the uniformity of the universe for everyone. He kept yelling, "It's all clear!" over and over again to the annoyance of all. Finally they told him to shut up and that they should just go with it until further notice. However everyone was still bracing for impact and wondering how they could prepare for the inevitable Nazi-brainwashing-rapist-regime that was sure to sweep the whole world away from them now that they'd changed their minds about Jesus.
Fortunately libertarian renegade and (former) theologian extraordinaire, Vox Day spoke up to call attention to atheist, Sam Harris' book, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values":
I have to applaud Sam for having the intellectual courage to seize the bull by the horns; unlike his fellow New Atheists (except Daniel Dennett), he has recognized the weak point of the lack of universal warrant and is attempting to do something about it.
So amazingly, all was not lost.
Outro:
If anyone has any other interesting quotes from the conference, post them in the comments, please.
Ben
Comments (34)
No one especially wanted to hear atheist, John Loftus, say,"I told you so."
lulz
I don't think that Craig is saying anything new or controversial. Perhaps you misunderstood his points?
You're certainly misrepresenting Lydia's point in your post.
She's confused about Bayes and prior probability, though less confused than Plantinga--she corrects one of his errors in failing to update prior probabilities. Basically, the prior probability of a resurrection based on natural agents is zero. The prior probability of a resurrection based on supernatural agents is unknown (well, let's assume that). The first is based on natural laws. The second excludes natural laws. Therefore, rigging a prior probability based on two very divergent scenarios is invalid. It's the essentialist fallacy all over again.
For example, let's suppose that we do 1000 trials of the question of whether a 2 ton rock can be lifted. In 999 of the trials (let's call them WT for "weak trials"), we use the motive power of an average man. In 1 trial we use a construction crane. The PP is 0.001. Let's suppose that we do 10,000 trials, where only 1 uses a construction crane. The PP is 0.0001. Is this use of PP valid, when by merely changing the number of WT we can change the PP? What does this PP say about a scenario where we ask what is the probability that a crane can lift a 2 ton rock or, alternatively, what is the probability that a man can lift a 2 ton rock?
Couldn't access Craig's post since I'm not registered and I don't want to register.
Couldn't follow your Hays stuff. Couldn't access the pdf. (The download stopped after 30K the first time and 54K the second.)
With respect to the MUH, may I recommend the HMACDOTHOAP (how many angels...) question? They have similar intellectual importance.
@soccerdadforlife - Prior probabilities can be assigned subjectively (usually not, and usually designate degrees of belief), objectively (usually a fair partition of the outcome space), or from data. I don't see how you're example represents any appropriate designation since assigning probabilities based on 1000 outcomes when the one example is categorically different doesn't apply. If anything, that would mean it has a unit (1) probability since it is 1:1. Your example is like trying to say "let's flip a coin 999 times, and then flip a heads only coin once and see how many times heads comes up." Those are two entirely different experiments where the first sequence of trials manifest as 0:999 and the other 1:1. This in no way says that the prior probability of the heads only coin is 1/1000! I assume Lydia's remark about priors is that out of the billions of humans that have ever died, so very few can ever be reported as having raised from the dead (much less be confirmed as actual outcomes). All of these fall within the same probability space since we can treat the scenario as one experiment. Your example treats separate experiments. It doesn't apply.
@bryangoodrich - On the contrary, my example of a categorical difference highlights the categorical difference in resurrection outcomes by a natural agent vs. a supernatural agent.
Lol, this must've been a fun conference.
@soccerdadforlife - No, your example meshes them together. The reason is that you haven't specified what the Bayesian situation is. Bayes' theorem reads P(E | H) = [ P(H | E) * P(E) ] / P(H), where we can think of E as the event observed and H as the hypotheses regarding the event (though, that need not be the case, nor one even be antecedent to the other). You're questioning the prior probability P(E) or the probability of the event regardless of H. Now, any probability can be viewed in terms of conditional probabilities, such that in each of these they are conditional on some background knowledge (i.e., P(E) = P(E | B) and P(E | H) = P(E | H.B), where B is that knowledge). If H is included in B, then we are not uncertain about anything, and we're just saying P(E) = P(E), the rest are unit values (i.e., P(H | H.B) = 1). Therefore, one has to specify what the hypothesis H and our background knowledge B is. Depending on that situation, P(E) is different. More abstractly, every probability of an event is conditional on the universe of discourse for that event. This includes the prior probability. Now, whether we are saying "happens naturally" or "happens supernaturally" is in the hypothesis or background knowledge makes a significant difference. Your example makes sense only in one of those cases, but it is unclear if you mean "... by a supernatural agent" to be part of our situational assumption or as part of the hypothesis for the event occurring. Maybe we're assuming or hypothesizing that "God exists." That would also impact the probabilities.
Regardless, a better way to deal with Bayes' theorem is to use the likelihoodist approach to comparing two hypotheses (H and G): P(E | H) / P(E | G) = [ P(H | E) * P(G) ] / [ P(G | E) * P(H) ]. In this case, the prior probability disappears entirely, and all that matters is the relative ratio. If the outcome is unit, then the hypotheses are incomparable. If it is greater than one, then H is preferred, else G is preferred. Of course, this requires that we know the probability of the hypotheses, and anything involving God is pretty much going to be unknown. Thus, trying to involve any sort of God hypothesis will be untenable to this sort of rationality from the start.
I'm still a little skeptical
Yeah, me too. These are isolated quotes. We don't know the full contexts. Just like when atheists accuse Christians of taking isolated quotes from atheists like Dawkins out of context. I'd have to hear more to make any kind of judgment.
@soccerdadforlife - @musterion99 - @SerenaDante - @bryangoodrich - Happy April Fool's!! (psst...I quoted everyone out of context...on purpose.)
@WAR_ON_ERROR - Yes, but you did so with such conviction. Much better than any creationist quote mining project I've ever read. I knew, since it's April 1st, that it couldn't be completely legit, but I was surprised that these were actual quotes. Kudos, good sir.
@GodlessLiberal - Oh yeah...they are definitely all actual quotes that sound very atheistie. Some slightly more trimmed than others for rhetorical effect. But mainly just in the genre of things they admit to, but don't realize the implications...and of course all strung together. And there was no conference, obviously.
@WAR_ON_ERROR - Good one!
@GodlessLiberal - Oh, I did make up the "It's all clear!" quote from Manata. Andy told me about Greta Christina's post on a fake atheist conference and I was inspired to generate my own version of it.
Baaahahahaha! Winning.
Yes, I note the date on this. Don't forget April 1st is world atheists' day - 'The fool has said in his heart, there is no God!'
@tendollar4ways - I know, right? I didn't think I'd convince anyone...
@kenedwards5 - I was going to quote the Bible out of context as well saying, "there is no god" but I thought that would be way too obvious. **shrug**
@WAR_ON_ERROR - How is it quoted out of context? I would have thought it is right in context!
@kenedwards5 - Well if you think the Bible is advocating the atheist position...more power to you.
You so got me.
@WAR_ON_ERROR - how on earth do you work that one out. I'm used to illogical thinking from you guys but that beats all!
@kenedwards5 - It makes sense that a Christian would be "used to illogical thinking." :p See how I quoted that out of context?
@WAR_ON_ERROR - I did ask you how I quoted the Bible out of context, not how an atheist quotes things out of context. Never mind, we're used to illogical thinking from guys like you. I mean, the very fact you think you are a 'war on error' points to the illogical nature of your own reasoning!
@kenedwards5 - Oh, I was never accusing you of quoting the Bible out of context. The Bible DEFINITELY says what you say it says. And the meaningless assertion is noted. Thanks for stopping by! Good luck converting atheists with the magic words of the Bible! I think you need to pray more, though, cuz it's not working...
@WAR_ON_ERROR - who says I was trying to convert you? Are you insecure?
@kenedwards5 - Oh...forgive my invalid inference into your motives.
@kenedwards5 - Please note that you weren't being educational, and you weren't making an argument, and I assumed you weren't just name calling, so given your belief system (and the assumed lack of stupidity), that leaves...magic words. Such as what we find in Isaiah 55:11, which many Christians quote justifying their use of Biblical assertions in contentious contexts. If you aren't interested in saving my immortal soul...that leaves what? Trolling?
@WAR_ON_ERROR - amazing how you guys can accuse someone else of trolling when you spend your whole lives doing it. Just a convenient label to put on someone whose views you disagree with. Your assumption of 'magic words' merely points out the fatuous lack of knowledge you guys have of the Bible in general and the Christian faith in particular.
@kenedwards5 - I didn't come to your blog and tell you that theists are fools. Thanks.
@WAR_ON_ERROR - Yeah, I thought your quotes seemed really out of context, but I wasn't going to say anything right away. Good April Fools post.
Go back and read Genesis 1-5. The explanation for the existence of evil is there. Do not blame God; allow the Bible to tell you what happened, and what He is doing about it in successive generations of people. He shows Himself stern, yet loving. He gives us the ability to deny who He is, but He is not silent (see Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 19, in its entirety). I believe, because I understand some things, and believe for the rest that is promised. Not every one has the guts to do that. But it makes more sense to me, than depending on mere chance.
I actually thought what some of the people said was pretty good. (only could read about half way, and felt the need to comment)
Great April fools post.
Awesome.
Umm... in the case that it seems to you that p, you should believe p in the absence of counterevidence. Are you . . disagreeing with that?
@pb49r - http://xa4.xanga.com/8c4f77f6c6333269701924/w215127106.png Good luck.
@WAR_ON_ERROR - I looked at the panel, and it is in error in that it starts with man's logic viewpoint, and not from God's. God made possible for us to make choices. There can be no choosing, if there is no actual choice to obey Him (and His Laws) or do "our own thing". Every one of the starting premises fail to define the real question, because they start with man's understanding and logic, not with what we actually are told of God's goodness in allowing us to be free-moral agents in this world.
@pb49r - Objection 3A represents what you've said and my responses are already on the map from there.