Evangelical Apologist Daniel Ray Objects To Atheism, Part 1
Recently I had the delightful opportunity to sit down to breakfast with the formidable atheist internet infidel and prolific author John W. Loftus. John came down to Texas for a visit recently and our ministry, Watchman Fellowship, invited John to participate in our Atheist & Christian Book Club. John is a good friend of our ministry’s president James K. Walker and has been on our book club as a guest at least three times, if memory serves me correctly.Below is a link to Part 1, plus our comments back and forth. As usual, there isn't enough time to comment on everything, or in great detail. Check it out and make your own observations.
Let me say up front that John is truly a gentleman and likable fellow. He was both thoughtful and respectful throughout our conversation about faith, epistemology, and several other topics pertaining to atheism and Christianity. You might disagree with John’s conclusions about God and Christianity, but one thing you cannot say of John is that he hasn’t thought much about why he no longer believes in God. We even spent some time discussing Latter-day Saint beliefs and my recent trip to Utah for the LDS spring General Conference. John asked me all about how I approach engagement with Mormons in Utah. And he listened. He wasn’t just pontificating atheism over hash browns and coffee, John genuinely seemed interested in why I believe Christianity is true.
One thing any engagement with John’s work will do for you is to make you check yourself as to whether or not you are just “parroting” your beliefs or if you really have examined and looked into them and have sound epistemological reasons for holding to your belief. John knows the Bible rather well, knows a lot of apologetic arguments for Christianity and was once a student of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig.
As an atheist, John has popularized the “Outsider Test for Faith” which you can find here. It is a test that has unfortunately caused not a little trouble for some folks who haven’t really examined the epistemological side of their faith in God. “How do you know what you claim to know?” If you have never examined that aspect of your beliefs, it can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re confronted by an atheist on the street who asks you this question.
And I can attest, that even though John might disagree with your conclusions if you are a Christian, he will respect your answers to his questions if you can demonstrate you have thought about why you believe what you believe.
John asked me over breakfast to check out some of his essays on The Secular Web. Since we chatted briefly about Mary, I thought I would have a go at responding to some of John’s points in his 9,000-plus-word essay on why he thinks Mary cannot be the mother of Jesus.
I don’t here claim I’ll be able to do justice to everything John mentions in the essay, and this may end up being a couple of posts, but this is why I like to write. I often have no idea where I’ll end up!
Daniel Ray: "John, ball is in your court. Give me
the “extraordinary” evidence that supports Shermer’s claim that science is the
best way to discover the truth about reality! And remember that no matter what
you say, I’ll simply remind you that nothing you present will be extraordinary
enough for me to believe you!"
John Loftus: One way to answer you is to ask you to show
how science works at all. How does it work? About what types of subject matter
does it investigate? With what does it convince other scientists and
scientifically minded people? When scientists cannot find an answer to a
problem, due to the lack of sufficient evidence, what do they do other than
investigate further, or admit they don't know? Beyond this, you need to go on
to show what other discipline can understand this subject matter better, or
equal to, the results of modern science. Now by science I mean the evidence of
the senses as augmented by scientific instruments, described mostly by math and
discussed by reasoning about the evidence.
What method do you propose that does a better job in
understanding the nature of nature, its workings, and its origins? Which model
before modern science do you advocate using instead of modern science? If you
adopt modern science at all, why?
Plenty of creation accounts are mentioned in the ancient
superstitious past before the advent of science, especially modern science.
There are Canaanite, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Asian, creation accounts aplenty.
Which ones do you advocate above, beyond, and opposed to the consensus of
scientists working in their respective fields? That's the highest authority. No
non-scientist can dispute that consensus. No outlier scientist can overturn
that consensus, until the consensus changes. While it has been wrong in the
past it still has the highest authority.
Daniel Ray: Let’s just test your assumption, scientifically, that past
people were superstitious. What are you going to do John, cite texts as
evidence for your conclusions? Show me some solid, empirical science
experiments that can conclusively demonstrate your hypothesis is true, don’t
just quote texts. Per your own criticisms of the Bible, citing texts as
evidence for your conclusions doesn’t count. Do a science experiment that
conclusively demonstrates ancient people were superstitious. And no second-hand
or third-hand testimonies, neither can you use eyewitness testimonies, for we
all know how unreliable those can be! Go for it, friend. Do your test and get
it peer-reviewed, even. I’ll wait! And as I said in the essay, perform a
science experiment that conclusively shows me that science is the best way to
understand the nature of reality.
John Loftus: These kinds of issues can be had by virtue of the historical method that is informed by the requirement of evidence. I don't see you even trying to understand what this entails.
Daniel Ray: But if I used your historical standards, doing any kind of meaningful historical research becomes nigh impossible. How so? You have dismissed out of hand eyewitness testimony and second, third, fourth (and beyond) testimonials as not counting as objective evidence.
Let's take Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Opus 23. You tell me John, how do we do a science experiment on the composition to determine why Chopin wrote it or what the notes mean. How do we perform a scientific test as to why Chopin chose G minor, why he arranged the notes, and what it all means and why so many consider it to be one of Chopin’s most beautiful works. How do we discover, solely through the means and tools of science, why the composition is arranged the way it is, and how the notes reflect Chopin’s longing for his homeland of Poland as he composed the piece in Vienna in 1831.
But until such time, there are a multitude of different ways of knowing, John. Scientific is but one means - you also have philosophical knowledge, aesthetic knowledge, poetic knowledge, musical knowledge, culinary knowledge, personal, intuitive knowledge, love and relational knowledge, knowledge of beauty, and truth itself. Do a scientific test to demonstrate that "truth" is real. What are you going to use, John? A telescope? A microscope? A large hadron collider? Michael Polanyi a chemist-turned-philosopher, suggests that science involves a kind of "tacit knowledge" - an unspoken concept of an epiphany or ah-ha moment in the mind of a scientist that advances scientific understanding in a way that not even a scientist can explain in scientific terms. Or what about Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician who had seen equations in the early 20th century that had not applicable relevance to anything at the time, but 40 or so years after his death in 1920, physicists were stunned by the fact that Ramanujan's equations were related to entropy in black holes. How do you explain that? Ramanujan knew nothing about black holes in 1920, no one did really. Einstein mentioned them in 1916, but it wasn't until the 1960s when "black hole theorizing" started to gain traction. And to this day, no one has ever seen a black hole, yet people believe they exist. We have seen the areas surrounding what is believed to be a black hole, but no one has ever seen the black hole itself. I’ll wait.
John Loftus: What method do you propose that does a better job in understanding the nature of nature, its workings, and its origins? Which model before modern science do you advocate using instead of modern science?
Daniel Ray: And as I said in the essay, perform a science experiment that conclusively shows me that science is the best way to understand the nature of reality. Well John, you could help me by showing how that proposed “science project” about Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 would work and we could go from there!
But if I used your historical standards, doing any kind of meaningful historical research becomes nigh impossible. How so? You have dismissed out of hand eyewitness testimony and second, third, fourth (and beyond) testimonials as not counting as objective evidence. Are you here providing me with a second-hand eyewitness testimony about the problems associated with historical research?
John Loftus: Historical research is indeed fraught with problems. Sometimes a whole era is only known by some coins. So historical research is only as good as the evidence. I see nothing wrong with this, or historical research at all. When the evidence is small the conclusions are also tempered by a lower probability.
Music, tastes, and beauty are not something science can examine for the truth. We can do scientific polls on them however. There seems to be some human music, taste, and beauty that are more or less universal and that's it. Science has also shown us how to create better musical instruments, discovered many new spices, and helped us agree on that which is beautiful.
Daniel Ray: So then John are you saying that there are other ways than science for understanding what is true about the world? If "science" can't answer my Chopin questions, then what do you propose we use in lieu of the limitations of science here?
John Loftus: As I said, music, tastes and beauty are not subjects in and of themselves for science. Science does touch on almost everything in one way or another, though. We'll probably never have a science class on music, tastes or beauty, unless it's about how different species sense them and how they affect us.
Daniel Ray: So we can know that something is true or beautiful or good APART from science, then?
John Loftus: What is considered beautiful is mostly subjective and dependent on the type of senses we have. Different species have different senses and even heightened senses. What they think is beautiful we don't really know.
Keep in mind that neither Shermer nor I have said scientific experimentation in the laboratory is the ONLY way for knowing what is true. What we have said is that science is the BEST way to gain knowledge about a particular subject, the nature of nature, its workings and the origins of nature.
Daniel Ray: Ok, fair enough. I'd grant "science" would be better served to discover bacteria in milk more than literary textual criticism or poetry, so to say. However, as in the example with Chopin, I think you might agree that there is certainly a "science" to the nature of sound and the construction of the piano, but there are also other legitimate questions that require different approaches to how or even why a composition is created. Science, for example, can certainly tell us something about what a planet or star is made of, but science can't tell us that the "stuff" of the universe is all there is. There is the very curious question of why the matter and energy of the cosmos is arranged the way it is. Science, in short, is not omnicompitent.
John Loftus: Science impacts and changes how other disciplines are done, some much more than others, like psychology, archaeology, and historical research (which in turn affects how biographies are written), and so on, and so on, and so on. You say science is not omnicompetent, that as yet, there are things that science has not discovered or understood. I can admit that's true, of course! Who knows what the future will bring? Modern science is in its infancy.
Keep in mind, that at every juncture in the history of science someone like you could always say there are still mysteries that have not yet been explained or understood by science. Tuberculosis was a really really tough disease to cure, taking three independent shots! The connection all life has via evolution was an even tougher discovery. Now scientists face biogenesis. Will you bet against science? How much would you wager? Scientists also face the ultimate beginnings of the existence of everything. Could the evidence for such a beginning be forever lost, not unlike the fires you posit might have destroyed all clues? This stands to reason much more so than your fires
Daniel Ray: I will "bet against science" when others wield it like an ideological weapon and claim that it has "killed God." Yes. Science, helpful in many respects as it has been, is a human endeavor, created by humans, maintained by human beings, and therefore not without particular biases and presuppositions about the nature of reality. Building rockets and curing diseases are not evidence that God does not exist, in other words. Anyone who claims science has done away with God didn't come to that conclusion by means of science, let's just put it that way!
John Loftus: I think there is indeed something within the nature of science and its requirement for objective evidence that eventually and ultimately undermines religious faith. Just as historians after the rise of modern science require objective evidence, as do our courts of law, so also people of faith will learn to look for and require objective evidence for their faith. On that score they'll find none. That's because, in my opinion--having previously been a Christian--faith is subjective feeling, a substitute for evidence.
No wonder the Mormon faith asks you to search inside your "heart" (an organ of the body that merely pumps out blood) to see if you have feelings for the Mormon god. Until you embrace the scientific method and its requirements, the basis for your newfound religion is still faith. You are not doing anything different now than when you were a Mormon. Somehow, somewhere, you learned to accept the deep inconsistencies and lack of evidence for your previous faith as destructive to your faith. Now you need to do the same with Christianity.
Come on now, do you really think there is a reason to believe Mary gave birth to an incarnate god without any objective evidence for such a claim at all? Even if true, a god who did this miracle, leaving no evidence for it, surely reveals an utterly incompetent deity.
Daniel Ray: I was never a Mormon. Former non-believer. Science, in order to in any wise "undermine faith" must have a working definition of God in order to be able to demonstrate God does not exist. And that is not within the purview of science. However, careful scientific scrutiny of the physical world reveals a great deal of design, that even Dawkins himself concedes, though he deems the design illusory (what does he mean by design, anyway? What are the standards he has in mind?).
The tragedy of your particular worldview John, one of them anyway, is that you can say something like a lightbulb was designed for a purpose (to give light in a room), but you can't say the same thing about the sun, moon, or stars (to give light on the earth), as practically wonderful as they seem to suit us down here for light and navigation. You can say a mannequin is the product of intelligent design, but you cannot say a fully functional and sentient human being is, something far more wondrous than styrofoam and plastic. You can say a glove was designed for a purpose but you cannot say the hand that fits into it was designed for any purpose whatsoever, no matter how wonderfully useful our hands seem to be for us. You can say a camera is designed, but you can't say the same thing about the eye.
So we have returned to your tautologically subjective criteria that there is no objective evidence for Mary giving birth to Jesus. But as I've pointed out before John, you contravene your own historical inquiries and methods when you discount testimonial evidence. You cannot on the one hand dismiss testimonial accounts but then on the other simply accept census data (which is a collection of second-hand information) to prove your point that many Jews of Jesus' day did not believe in Him. You cite the Bible as a source of many of your objections, too (the Jews didn't believe, Jesus' family thought He was out of his mind, etc.) and you seem to allow for those to be legitimate, but only since they appear to serve your presuppositional atheism.
If this deity is "utterly incompetent" John, why have you expended most of your academic and intellectual efforts trying to force this point? It should be obvious, shouldn't it? If God is as you say, then may I suggest a change of heart and mind about basing your entire life and work on polemical diatribes against an incompetent deity whom you believe doesn't even exist in the first place. You seem to revel in your wrecking-ball counter-apologetics without a single modicum or hint about how you'd go about replacing Him. You need to answer the Madman's questions, Mr. Loftus.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
John Loftus: Sorry about my misunderstanding that you were a Mormon. The same points I made however, go towards your attempts to disabuse Mormons of their faith. Look thee after ye own faith!
I don't think you take seriously my claim that I don't care if a god exists. It does not play into my counter-apologetics, at all!
My approach is that even if a god of some kind exists, there is no objective evidence for your miracle claims, the ones that you say are the foundation of your faith!
When it comes to the testimonies in the Bible to miracles they are insufficient for any reasonable person to accept them. They are believed because you think faith as a means to acquire factual information about the past is legitimate. No! The surest way to blindly accept falsehoods is to believe a miracle took place because you read it in a prescientific book without any objective evidence, and without a sufficient amount of reasons to accept 3rd 4th 5th handed, edited, compiled, debated (Luke vs Matthew) texts.
Again, there are four original sources, Mark (who left readers without a resurrection appearance), Q (which has no resurrection story), the Gospel of Thomas (with no resurrection), and Paul (with whom we can legitimately and quite reasonably conclude his Damascus Road appearance was a vision.)
Daniel Ray: Again John, “the gospel according to Loftus” is far beyond the pale of second, third, fourth, or even a fifth-hand account. You are 2,000 years removed from the events in question.
If I didn’t take you or your atheism seriously, I would not have expended the effort to engage your work.
Once more, you believe the Scriptures to the point of accepting that Paul had a vision, but you then you doubt what it was all about. Why do you even accept that Paul had a vision? If the Gospels are inaccurate in what they say of Jesus, the chief Cornerstone of the entire edifice, why do you believe there’s anything truthful in its pages? Was there really a Pilate? Herod’s Temple? Scribes and Pharisees? Malta? Twin figures on a ship’s masthead, the pool of Siloam? Did Paul even exist?
John Loftus: I do not believe your Scriptures up until any point in the texts. I can have doubts about anything and everything in them that is not corroborated by external sources, since they are obviously propaganda. But you do. Since you do, I meet you halfway, most of the time.
We can discuss what I do and don't believe in them, but the core of our disagreements is about miracles.
Thanks, by the way, for the discussion.
Daniel Ray: Glad to do it, John! Any time. It was good to get a good wallop from an unbeliever in a nice way! My sword had gotten a bit rusty. Let us know when you’re back in town! I am working on the universe essay.
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