Reason and Research as opposed to Rhetoric on Religious Claims

[bhsmte]

Them's fightin' words. Kierkegaard is one of my most important influences.

I'm very literate when it comes to the rational arguments for the existence of God, since it helps me articulate whatever intuitions I have and pinpoint just where my disagreements with atheists lie. I've only been a full-fledged theist for just under a year (former pantheist), so knowing everything is very important to me right now. And it's certainly illuminating to take a second look at the arguments I wrote off as nonsensical in my Spinozist days.

But to quote John Donne, "Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, but is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue." I can go round and round in circles over the various arguments, spiral out of control and end up at radical skepticism instead. There's always a leap to faith involved; it might be over a puddle instead of across a chasm, but it's still a leap. Reason alone is not sufficient--the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.

This is why I think writers like Kierkegaard are so important, perhaps especially in Apologetics. I frankly thought Christianity had nothing interesting to say until I ran across him, since everyone is always mired in endless debates over unanswerable questions. Fideism may be an equal and opposite reaction to this tendency, but we need people out there who challenge this very obsession with reason and focus instead on the real questions Christianity poses about the self.



I haven't read it yet, but it looks like the argument is that the existentialist concept of authenticity has roots in Protestant pietism. I'm a former Sartrean, and I have definitely noticed parallels between Christian theology and the way existentialists approached questions concerning human existence--there are lots of things up to and including original sin that just seem obviously true to me because of this particular background, so it's interesting to think that my initial influences may themselves have been in dialogue with Christianity despite rejecting it.

We ran so far, we ended up where we started.

Which is probably appropriate, all things considered.

All religions can have something interesting to say, if it is appealing from a psychological standpoint to an individual. The other thing is, psychological needs change in people and vary wildly, which likely explains why we have different religions and so many denominations even within christianity alone and people can jump from one religion to another or away from it altogether.

 

[Hieronymus]

It states quite plainly that God can do whatever it wants, it is uncontrollable, and thus, can thus explain any observable circumstance.

This means the idea of God is vacuous.

Nice rhetoric.

But what if the observed circumstance / phenomenon is not explainable by anything else?

 

[Silmarien]

Beyond that, the opinions on historical credibility are all over the place and there is no consensus. Furthermore, a historians job (if they follow the historical method), is to determine the most likely explanation. Since miracles by nature, are the least likely explanation, historians dont touch them.

My brother is a historian. It is absolutely normal that historians be all over the place with no consensus--history is an incredibly murky field, especially ancient history. It isn't always a matter of determining the most likely explanation or even any explanation at all; the point is to get a more insightful understanding of the past.

Historians do touch miracles. They are not interested in proving or disproving them, but you cannot study the history of a society that believed in miracles without discussing the miracles they believed in. History isn't a natural science; it's about more than facts, and even the facts themselves are uncertain.

I agree with you, though, that the Resurrection is by definition not a historical question.

 

[Hieronymus]

By that rationale do you think Dawkins declined the seven other invitations to speak on that same night out of trepidation? As I explained, I'd never heard of William Lane Craig prior to reading your OP, and I'm not an admirer of Richard Dawkins, but in this incident the latter is not the one showcasing failed logic.

I thought you just explained you read of apparent WLC oponents who tried to showcase WLC's failed logic.

Dawkins has an established history of willingness to engage in debate with prominent Christians, and he also receives more invitations than he can feasibly accept.

Christian philosophers with a similar amount of experience in debating make minced meat of Dawkins.

If WLC is advocating that reason rather than rhetoric be used in debates he undermined himself with that silly and manipulative stunt.

If it was a stunt, maybe.
But Dawkins has reclined and avoided debating Craig a couple of times.

 

[Hieronymus]

I agree with you, though, that the Resurrection is by definition not a historical question.

What other than a historical question could it even be?

Christian Apologetics is mainly about historical evidence (i.m.o.).

 

[Silmarien]

All religions can have something interesting to say, if it is appealing from a psychological standpoint to an individual. The other thing is, psychological needs change in people and vary wildly, which likely explains why we have different religions and so many denominations even within christianity alone and people can jump from one religion to another or away from it altogether.

I would not say there are that many denominations in Christianity. The Mainline Protestant ones are basically interchangeable, after all. I attend both an Episcopal and a Russian Orthodox church, and they have a fair amount in common, despite one being theologically liberal and the other conservative. I also pay a bit of attention to Sufi Islam, Vedanta Hinduism, and Taoism, and I really do not see vast psychological differences at play. Quite the opposite, often.

I am not sure what your point is, though. Psychology is an important aspect of what it means to be human, so I think it self-evident that if religion is true in any meaningful sense, it needs to address psychology as well. It can't spend all of its energy on obsessively trying to prove its claims.

 

[Hieronymus]

All religions can have something interesting to say, if it is appealing from a psychological standpoint to an individual.

It's a matter of truth and un-truth to most religious people.
Hmm... Maybe not to most, but to many.

The other thing is, psychological needs change in people and vary wildly, which likely explains why we have different religions and so many denominations even within christianity alone

The history and how this works in real life gives a good answers to why there are so many denominations and religions.
You can assume it's because of psychological needs, and it's often what religions (at least in our culture) appeal to, but what is obviously of more importance is the credibility question.

and people can jump from one religion to another or away from it altogether.

Many become naturalists nowadays, in our culture.
Naturalism is a philosophical belief too, just like theism is.
And also in naturalism there are various 'denominations'.

 

[bhsmte]

It's a matter of truth and un-truth too most religious people.
Hmm... Maybe not to most, but to many.
The history and how this works in real life gives a good answers to why there are so many denominations and religions.
You can assume it's because of psychological needs, and it's often what religions (at least in our culture) appeal to, but what is obviously of more importance is the credibility question.
Many become naturalists nowadays, in our culture.
Naturalism is a philosophical belief too, just like theism is.
And also in naturalism there are various 'denominations'.

To me, it is more about how each person is motivated to find this truth you speak of. That is where their personal psychological need plays a major factor.

 

[Silmarien]

What other than a historical question could it even be?

It's a theological question. I think there are some perplexing historical questions involved, like how early Christianity arose in the first place, but historical analysis can only get you so far. We can't reach into the minds of the earliest Christians to figure out what was really going on.

Christian Apologetics is mainly about historical evidence (i.m.o.).

No, Christian Apologetics is about giving a defense of Christianity. Showing that the Resurrection is historically credible is certainly one aspect of that, but it's not the only one, and by itself, it's really not sufficient. Historical evidence for the Resurrection doesn't prove Incarnational, Trinitarian, or Atonement theology.

Christianity is much bigger than its historical claims.

 

[Hieronymus]

To me, it is more about how each person is motivated to find this truth you speak of. That is where their personal psychological need plays a major factor.

I could agree with that, but then i'll have to look at my desperation for truth which i had at the time (before finding any)as a psychological need.
And in fact, it was a psychological need to find something that is true and (thus) able to withstand any scrutiny, or at least withstand it better than anything else.
But i think you were probably referring to things more like filling some emptinesses of the mind.
Now lack of knowledge of truth is of course an emptiness of the mind in itself, but it has become clear to me that most people's beliefs are not the result of diligently seeking truth only.

Since this is in the Christian Apologetics subforum, and the OP question is about evidence and reason versus "rhetoric" (which seems a bit hard to define), my angle here is to defend a 'reasonable faith'.
"This truth i speak of" as you say, is the Bible.
But i don't know where to start with making a case for it...

The tendency in this topic seems to be discussing philosophy.
Philosophy is basically 'reasoning', and i think it's obvious it will lead you to conclude there must be an intelligent Cause(r) or premise (Facilitator) to account for our common reality.
This is strongly supported by evidence: the existence of our fine tuned universe and the mindbogglingly complex phenomenon we call living nature, of which we are a part and even able to discuss it.
For the rest there is a mountain of evidence (hey i sound like an evolutionist now ) that points to God of the Bible, YHWH Elohim, Jesus Christ, as the most likely candidate for the position of "God most High", who is the Original Cause(r), the Facilitator, Creator, God.

The undeniable fact that this is all a HUGE controversy with many forces and lobbies behind several convictions other than where the evidence and reason leads to, is in itself an important piece of evidence in favour of the existence of YHWH Elohim, the truth of the Bible and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Does it all make me happy? No.
I'm getting quite sick and tired of the fact that the truth is as unpopular as it is, and especially of the reasons why it is unpopular.
One problem is that the lies are believed to be true and the truth is believed to be lies.
Another problem is human nature.
And there are 'the powers that shouldn't be' manipulating the world and (or should i say 'by')following their own disgusting religion behind the curtains.
In all, i have become a sad and lonely foreigner on this planet.

So, where is all this evidence then?
Some of it is here in my playlist:
apologetics - YouTube

 

[2PhiloVoid]

What you think of his reasoning for losing faith, has nothing to do with his credentials for NT scholarship and the historicity of the same. People move away from faith and to faith, for a myriad of different reasons.

If my opinion of Ehrman's reasoning has nothing to do with his credentials, then similarly, I suppose that what you think of how WLC holds his Christian faith has nothing to do with his particular credentials regarding his own scholarship, either.

Moreover, my own view is that since no one person can see all and know all, there are ALWAYS limitations and holes in everyone's thinking, this includes mine, this includes yours, and it applies as well to our friend Bart Ehrman. So..........despite his credentials, if I read his book and spot limitations (or instances where he's not actually taking all factors into account), then in my estimation he is open game for criticism, probably legitimate criticism, just as would be WLC (and we all know he constantly is under criticism by many skeptics).

So, if I were to read WLC's work and spot the same kind of thing that I do in Ehrman's work, I would feel free to criticize his conclusions based on things I've learned from reading and studying a host of other people who also have PhDs. I'm not going to value any authors with a PhD at some level where their arguments are excluded from scrutiny and held high as some kind of standard just because some people think they are "at the top of the game."

While I do give priority to PhDs in deciding who I will listen to, this doesn't mean that I ever read a work by anyone without at the same time looking for cracks in the arguments therein. I try to live by the adage "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." So while I'm taking a gander at Ehrman's book, and being that it is a book of argumentation and not an autobiographical work, it will be subject to "the same sauce."

 

[Ada Lovelace]

I thought you just explained you read of apparent WLC oponents who tried to showcase WLC's failed logic.

Yes, I did indeed just explain that prior to reading the OP I was unfamiliar with William Lane Craig, but in my brief search of him I found the article I shared as well as a condemnatory one on a creationist website, but I gave the latter little credence due to their own reputation.

Christian philosophers with a similar amount of experience in debating make minced meat of Dawkins.

Such as?

If it was a stunt, maybe.

But Dawkins has reclined and avoided debating Craig a couple of times.

An invitation to debate is not an obligation to, and it is the prerogative of anyone to decline. Doing so doesn't indicate avoidance, merely disinterest. Neither WLC nor anyone else, Christian or atheist, is entitled to the time of someone else who holds no position in their lives. Dawkins has accepted invitations from Christians with far more prestigious degrees and positions than WLC's so he's clearly not adverse to such debates, if he feels that particular person is worthy of his investment of time.

 

[Hieronymus]

Such as?

John Lennox springs to mind.

Others have mortally refuted Dawkins' "philosophy" outside the debating arenas.

I heard Dawkins is still waiting for his watch to be repaired.
He brought it to his favourite watchmaker 10 years ago.

 

[Dirk1540]

It's a theological question. I think there are some perplexing historical questions involved, like how early Christianity arose in the first place, but historical analysis can only get you so far. We can't reach into the minds of the earliest Christians to figure out what was really going on.

But we can reach into their patterns. These patterns can hint to us what their minds tended to reject as false, and what their minds tended to except as probable. But I think we have some agreement here...Why on Earth do we see paterns of what their minds rejected as false so drastically embraced in the start of Christianity?

Hey, Haha your brother is a historian?? Is he as sharp as you? Please tell me that he is an articulate modernist defender of the merits of historiography, and you of course the 'History is murky' postmodern...and that Thanksgiving/Christmas family dinners are debate central HAHA! If I'm correct on this, can I come visit for one of the main events lol?

 

[variant]

Nice rhetoric.

But what if the observed circumstance / phenomenon is not explainable by anything else?

It is an observation about religious ideas that happens to be true.

In the case where God is a demonstrated thing with defined characteristics, you would have a God demonstrating itself. We don't. And until we do, the idea is vacuous.

What we have is some stories and theology and a supposed invisible actor that explains all of the observations we can make on our own.

I am not going to say a theoretical being with the powers that religious people describe can't make itself known though. It should be quite possible.

 

[Uber Genius]

Historical analysis is not able to judge the validity of theological claims. [...] historians cannot really judge the question of whether God raised Jesus from death. All historical analysis can do is to explore when and in what circumstances such claims emerged, what people seem to have meant in making such claims, and what the subsequent effects were."

So what Larry Hurtado is conflating here is a strawman.

Let me explain why. WLC is not arguing here or in any of his debates for a theological claim.

He is saying the best explanation for the data about the resurrection is that it is an actual historical event.

Premises are then used based on the nature of the witnesses accounts. And the minimal facts they all represent. Just as any historian (without an axe to grind that is) would do.

Defeaters are offered against Bart's inference that the gospel accounts are fiction. Or so convoluted by redaction as to be untrustworthy.

So this is similar to misrepresentations about the Kalam cosmological argument. If we misrepresent the KCA as a scientific proof of a theological statement then it is easy to knock down that statement as false. But WLC uses scientific consensus concerning cosmogony to support his premise that the universe began to exist.

Thus construed is becomes strong support for the second premise of the KCA.

It's in Ehrman's first rebuttal in the transcript above, where Ehrman points out that Craig is quoting scholars who do not actually agree with what he's saying

This is where Ehrman lies! Why I think he is dishonest!

He has a PhD. He knows that Craig is stating that, "even the skeptics agree on the base facts."

Ehrman then misrepresents Craig as saying "these scholars agree with my conclusion."

This is not how the minimal facts argument works.

It is a great legal and debating strategy to get your opponent or skeptics like Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossen (who are atheist theologians and historians) to agree with the facts of the theist.

 

[Uber Genius]

Them's fightin' words. Kierkegaard is one of my most important influences.

Didn't mean to offend.

Perhaps fideism in not "obviously" false. And I let a rhetorical flourish get the better of me.

If we look at how fideism for a minute:

"Within the sphere of the “intellectual”—e.g., within scientific or historical scholarship—inquiry is conceived in terms of a process of “approximation” to reality. When it comes to religion, however, what matters, according to Kierkegaard, is not the “object to which the knower relates himself” but the relationship itself: the accent falls not on “what is said” but on “how it is said” (1846, 199 and 202). For Kierkegaard, as for the so-called evangelical fideists, faith is characterized by passionate commitment and thus requires a decision or “qualitative leap” (1846, 384). His claim is not simply that having evidence is unnecessary in this context, but that it would, so to speak, destroy the whole endeavor, since it would alter the meaning of the beliefs in question and the spirit in which they could be believed. “If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am ‘out on 70,000 fathoms of water’ and still have faith” (1846, 204). "

"Any belief that depended on the outcome of historical or scientific approximation—and which could be undermined by its results—would not be genuine faith, and anything whose existence could be established purely on the basis of philosophical argument—and so could be believed in “indifferently,” without this belief making a significant difference in one’s life—would by definition not be God. “Anyone who wants to demonstrate the existence of God…proves something else instead, at times something that perhaps did not even need demonstrating, and in any case never anything better” (1844, 43)."

So it seems that he is making an argument in reaction to Hegelian epistemology here. The idea that we cannot "Prove." And we also recognize the whole Cartesian Modernism project wrongly focuses on certainty of knowledge and its ungrounded skeptical foundation.

However SK is making an argument above our typical way of knowing the world can't possibly be how we know God. But he seems to go further than Jesus who teaches about both God's attributes, God's Kingdom, God's intent, using parables and analogies with things in this world. Teaching truths about God the same way one teaches truths about farming or ranching.

The gospel writers over and over again appeal to eye-witness accounts, not to "just believe and don't even ask for evidence and arguments because you can't prove anything."

Again Paul and Barnabas Acts 13-19:

Argue in the synagogue the historical facts
Argue in the open forums
Argue in the gymnasiums

Paul argues from what can be known using logic and he engages the philosophers in philosophical arguments.

These are the things that seem to me to run opposite of SK.

Do we have the type of Hegelian systematic knowledge, of course not. But do we have to abandon the large portion of the New Testament where by men are persuaded that God has certain attributes and requirements, that mono-theism is true and polytheism is false?

It is certainly reasonable to believe we can't comprehend God. But is it reasonable as the thomist believe, to believe he is so different in his nature as to not be perceivable (possible to apprehend). Only if we reject both testaments as false.

God has taught me much in quiet times. He has shown me things that no human or system could ever have intuited. My relationship of faith is based on thousands of small pieces of evidence, some a posteriori experiences, others a priori arguments such as the KCA.

Hegel is wrong. And SKs hymns and thoughts about God are marvelous, but it seems his epistemology doesn't square with the accounts of the early evangelists. It seems that God has designed a world that can be perceived (although not perfectly) by humans, and that we can have justification for why we believe in God, and that Jesus argued a chain of true premises and sound arguments couple with works of power that were evidential in nature. That fulfilled prophecy seemed to be another evidential area Jesus, the gospel writers, and Paul were focused on.

SK seems to be at odds with the whole early evangelist.

Unless one believes we have no accurate accounts whatsoever in the NT, the method deployed there seems to be a knockdown argument to "choosing to believe."

 

[Hieronymus]

It is an observation about religious ideas that happens to be true.

In the case where God is a demonstrated thing with defined characteristics, you would have a God demonstrating itself. We don't. And until we do, the idea is vacuous.

I would say you're not convinced.
"Vacuous" implies there is no evidence at all, which is simply not true.

 

[Uber Genius]

I'd never heard of William Lane Craig prior to reading your OP,

This speaks volumes.

Dawkins is panned by his fellow atheist as fallacious.

Atheist philosophers praise WLC since oh the late 1970s.

If you were familiar with Dawkins you would not have questioned my characterization one bit.

As to the reason that Dawkins skipped out. Look at who he generally debates. Rarely does he tackle a philosophically trained theist. He picks local pastors who do not even have an undergrad in phil.

So your statement, "Dawkins has an established history of willingness to engage in debate with prominent Christians," is just false and in fact is central to Dawkins own reply.

You seem to be word-for-word in line with the Dawkins defense.

Yet you claim to not be a fan.

And you are on an Christian apologetics forum and don't know the number one Christian apologist for the last 30 years? Here is a partial list of 36 debates with the top atheists over the last 25 years. It doesn't any from the previous 15 years where he debated people like Antony Flew and JL Mackey.

Debate Transcripts | Reasonable Faith

Have you heard of Ravi Zacharias per chance?

How about Alvin Plantinga?

 

[Hieronymus]

It's a theological question.

The theological implications only come into play (or not) after assessing the truth of the source of the theology.