My Response To Foundation Of Sand, Part IIFoundation of Sand is an essay that offers several examples of alleged contradictions in the Bible. Here’s three more that I think fail.
In Part I, I showed that zero contradictions exist in the Bible’s criteria for salvation. We used the following definition of contradiction: From Wikipedia, “[A] contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical inversions of each other.” I feel it’s reasonable to say a contradiction can be represented by the following formula:
(x) + (-x) = contradiction.
False Argument #16: Bible Offers Contradictory Criteria For SalvationThe question of biblical inerrancy comes up often in debates between believers and skeptics of all stripe, with the typical formula being gross overstatements on behalf of skeptics, and inefficient responses to these gross overstatements on behalf of believers. At the request of a commenter on DA calling himself Brad, I said that I would take a look at an essay titled Foundation of Sand, alleged to prove biblical contradiction and error.
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Is A Screwdriver Better Than A Ratchet? or, My Response To Evidence-Based Faith vs. Evidence-Free FaithSo I stumbled across this article in the blogosphere yesterday, which argued for the superiority of reason in formulating our worldviews. More specifically, the author was responding to claims that the validity of logic and reason have to be taken on faith. Apologists often criticize atheism as a faith-based worldview, which may be true in a trivial sense. However, such does not necessarily level the playing field and what the author of EBFVEFF correctly notes is that even in the restricted sense that atheism is a faith-based worldview, it's based on a different type of faith; faith that proceeds from empirical, observable evidence.
Even so, does this make evidence-based faith inherently superior to evidence-free faith?
Out-Of-Scope Claims & Falsifiability: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, IIIIn Part I & Part II I alleged that significant biblical oversights compromise the integrity of the arguments contained in A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM), unfortunately rendering the piece little more than an extremely well-written and well-researched strawman / either-or fallacy.
Now I’d like to address a few more of the author’s statements, aiming to show that even when facts themselves are completely authoritative, interpretations are surely not always so. Although I don’t expect to convince any skeptics of the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ if any skeptic will concede that my tripartite interpretation is at least internally consistent, or at least that the following paragraph contains genuine difficulties, I would consider such a success.
The author begins the second section of AGITM with:
“The evidence shows that (aspects of consciousness) are completely determined by the physical configuration of the brain, and that a change to this configuration can alter or eliminate any of them. In short, I will show that, as the materialist position predicts, every part of the mind is entirely dependent on and controlled by the brain.” (paren. and ital. mine)
The Biblical Doctrine of Salvation: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, IIIn Part I we discussed the first pivotal misunderstanding of religion I claim compromises the validity of the main thesis in the rather well-written A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM). The second implicit misunderstanding we ought to discuss relates to misinterpretations of salvation, the peculiarly culturally-resilient notion that,
“If the person has been virtuous, the soul is admitted to Heaven for an eternity of reward; if the person has been wicked or sinful, their soul descends to Hell for an eternity of punishment.”
Although the author did not explicitly assert this to be the Bible’s position, this is not a biblical teaching, and it is unclear from the essay whether the author understands the biblical perspective, although many of the questions asked in the case studies raise legitimate concern. The above is nevertheless an erroneous interpretation of scripture frequently straw-manned by critics of all stripe in the general public and academia alike, not surprisingly with little or no counter from theism. I say “not surprisingly” because as the author of AGITM is apt to notice, many pious do not know the Bible with the same degree of expertise they expect of its critics.
As with yesterday’s discussion, this apparent misunderstanding of salvation potentially undermines AGITM’s overall argument and even further lessens its relevance to theism. Although less relevant to AGITM’s main thesis (the argument against spirit / soul), this point of contention is relevant to many of the sub-arguments and questions of whether salvation would be granted under the unfortunate conditions experienced by those in the fourteen case studies. Many and possibly all of the sub-dilemmas raised fall apart when salvation is delineated in a manner compatible with scripture. For it is only in the misunderstood context of the biblical ‘soul’ and the rewards-and-punishments system that such questions as these arise at all:
“One must ask whether these people’s disabilities will affect their eternal fate. Would a Christian, Jew or Muslim who lost their automatic speech be held accountable by God for failing to say the prayers he has demanded of them, through no fault of their own? What about a deeply religious individual who loses the ability to speak except in profanities?”
…or the following from the discussion of frontotemporal dementia (FTD):
“..will God damn people for their genes?”
The Biblical Distinction Between Soul And Spirit: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, IEbonmuse has on his site another much-talked-about essay titled A Ghost In The Machine which is a valiant argument against Cartesian duality, or the generally-theist idea that humans have a soul substance that can survive or somehow transcend the death of the physical body. While leaving a comment in the thread of On Expertise I noticed another comment by Heliobates which read,
“…if you want to read what I consider to be THE SLAM DUNK argument against theism, check out our host’s A Ghost In The Machine. Without Cartesian dualism, religion is dead in the water.”
To this I responded,
“IMO the error… is in assuming all religion dependent upon the Cartesian paradigm. Yes, I can and will offer a detailed counter-explanation, but it is far beyond the scope of the thread..”
So here we are. I said I would offer a detailed counter-explanation, and now I’ve got to stick to my word.
The Theist’s Guide To Converting Atheists: My Response To EbonmuseThe atheist blogger Ebonmuse has for nearly a decade now hosted an essay on his website titled The Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists. I was originally pointed to the essay from a link on another atheist blog asking believers to consider potential facts or situations that would sway them from belief.
What follows is my initial set of responses to this essay.
On EvangelismI was in the blogosphere this morning and came across a question:
"Is it okay for atheists to try to change people's minds? To try to convince people that their religion is mistaken, and that they should de-convert and become atheists instead? And is there any difference between that and religious evangelicalism?"
To begin, I'd respond by saying atheists are fundamentally incapable of any form of evangelism. This is because the word itself is inextricably intertwined with positive affirmations of faith. Now this is not to say that atheists can't or don't undertake similar methods as evangelists in getting their points across. Nonetheless, the question the author asks is valid.
Hello Intuition, Meet Empiricism: My Response To “A Different Way Of Knowing”In A Different Way Of Knowing, the author begins with slamming insights about the value of the intuitive-creative processes, arguing persuasively that irrational decision-making processes can be valuable. Love, art and music all reject empiricism and involve listening subjectively to our hearts, feelings and intuitions, and nobody would argue that they lack value just because they aren’t arrived at through empiricism. Conceding that some aspects of life are better left to the intuitive method of gathering information, the author proceeds to argue that "the God hypothesis" is not one of them, and is better evaluated via empiricism and the scientific method. I object to the piece on several grounds, five of which follow.