What’s Wrong with the World

A article on Thomas Nagel (who has been critical of materialist reductionist naturalism without ever fully rejecting it) and intelligent design at the Mises Review.

http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=366

Quote:

Nagel's remarks on Intelligent Design are of great philosophical significance. He is an atheist and does not accept the view that a designing mind directed the evolutionary process. But he opposes what he deems a contemporary prejudice in favor of reductionist naturalism. He doubts that Darwinism can adequately explain the existence of objective value and looks instead to an immanent teleology in the world.

Although he does not accept Intelligent Design, Nagel refuses to dismiss the movement as merely religious. Critics claim that design cannot be a legitimate scientific hypothesis; but at the same time, they maintain that the theory can be shown to be false. Nagel pertinently asks, how can both of these assertions be true together? Further, Nagel sees no constitutional obstacle to teaching Intelligent Design.

Nagel's opinions on this issue have led to a remarkable episode. Brian Leiter runs a blog, Leiter Reports, which is read by philosophers, owing to detailed accounts of promotions, jobs, and other news about philosophy departments. Leiter's comparative rankings of philosophy departments also attract much attention. Leiter obtrudes his own political and social views on his audience; were he to present these in a separate venue, it is a safe bet that his audience would vastly diminish. Among Leiter's many aversions, the Intelligent Design movement ranks among the foremost: he often attacks what he calls the "Texas Taliban."

When Nagel's article on Intelligent Design appeared, Leiter could not contain his rage. We were presented with the unedifying spectacle of Leiter's speaking in abusive and condescending terms about one of the foremost philosophers of the past half-century. Nagel's The Possibility of Altruism, The View From Nowhere, and the essays collected in Mortal Questions are classics of modern philosophy.

Matters worsened when Nagel recommended in The Times Literary Supplement Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell as one of his "Best Books of the Year." Meyer is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design, and his book argues that naturalistic accounts of the origin of life on earth confront severe difficulties. Only a designing intelligence, Meyer contends, can account for the intricately specified information contained in DNA. Nagel did not endorse Meyer's conclusion but praised the book for its account of the "fiendishly difficult" problem of life's origin.

This recommendation aroused Leiter to new heights of contumely. It seems quite likely that Leiter never bothered to look at Meyer's book. He quoted from an English professor of chemistry protesting Nagel's claim that natural selection cannot account for DNA because it presupposes its existence. The chemistry professor, echoed by Leiter, said that natural selection exists in the preorganic world: was not Nagel ignorant to deny this? Both Leiter and the chemist ignored the fact, much emphasized by Meyer, that such resorts to natural selection are controversial. To appeal to the fact of their existence against Nagel is to assume what is much in dispute. Leiter extended his attack to accuse Nagel of ignorance of the relevant fields of study. Nagel has never claimed authority in biology; but had Leiter bothered to read Nagel's well-known essay, "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness," he would discover that Nagel has more than a passing acquaintance with neurobiology.

I have gone on at some length about this, because the attempt by Leiter and others to block inquiry that challenges naturalism seems to me altogether deplorable. But even if these avid naturalists are correct in their metaphysics, debate needs to be encouraged rather than suppressed.

Some other articles here on the topic:

http://talk.thinkingmatters.org.nz/2009/atheist-philosopher-slammed-for-endorsing-meyers-book-on-intelligent-design/

http://go.qci.tripod.com/Reppert-interview.htm

I think Nagel is a good example of someone who _questions_ naturalism--or at least what he calls "reductionist naturalism." Searle would be another example.

Can we also find non-naturalist or libertarian (on free will) philosophers _outright_ who are not theists?

Of course, if you go back historically, most of the English Hegelians would count. Whether they were philosophically sensible in believing in Mind (capital M) without believing in God is a good question. Lewis is rather funny about trying to be a Hegelian as a tutor and finding that to present a coherent position to his students he had to sound like a Berkeleyan instead. But the fact remains that they did not _think_ of themselves as theists.

"The most important insight that I think any philosopher (Christian or otherwise) can gain from Plantinga's injunctions is the realization that what is presently popular and even dogma in an intellectual field can be and surprisingly often is completely wrong. (Now if only Plantinga would have the confidence to apply that insight to New Testament studies...But I digress.)"

Lydia, to what are you referring in the parenthetical remarks? (By the way: this is not rhetorical - I genuinely do not know, and am interested.)

Thanks for an interesting post.

Well, my husband and I have had a long exchange (mostly in the pages of _Philosophia Christ_) with Plantinga about the historical evidence for Christianity. Beginning in Warranted Christian Belief Plantinga commented that because "experts disagree" on the historical evidence for Christianity and in particular for the resurrection, we "should probably declare this probability inscrutable" and that it is only by being "generous" that we consider it more probable than not. (WCB p. 276) Later in one of the Phil Christi exchanges he said with a certain appearance of impatience that he can't go back to seminary to re-investigate these matters.

But of course, by his own examples regarding philosophy, it should be evident to him that a field can get, shall we say, very messed up with unargued or poorly argued assumptions getting woven in as if they had been supported by argument. And in NT studies one also has a phenomenon whereby scholars innocently copy other scholars' estimates or claims (say, regarding dating of some NT book) without realizing that those scholars are depending on, or depending on someone who is depending on, anti-supernatural assumptions and building these in to the supposedly factual estimate.

That was the meaning of the parenthetical comment: Plantinga should be even more suspicious than he is of "experts" in this other field as well and hence not put much weight on the mere fact of expert disagreement.

Plantinga’s project sounds like a plea for a return to Aquinas’ ‘ancilla theologiae’; I’m sympathetic to your critique. But that there may be non-theist philosophers who reject naturalism seems problematic. If the rejection of non-Christianity-friendly-isms is not sufficient to turn one into a Christian, some kind of ‘leap’ must be required.

‘Given that Christianity is true, true philosophical positions will of course be consistent with Christianity.’

Right, but is there a consistent and coherent statement of Çhristianity in the first place? Most contemporary philosophers may consider statements of Christian dogma ‘sophistical claptrap’; fideists may not worry.

But that there may be non-theist philosophers who reject naturalism seems problematic.

Do you mean this is literally impossible or that any non-theist who is not a naturalist must be making some sort of philosophical mistake? Would there be a formal incoherence in believing in the existence of finite minds not reducible to matter but not believing in God?

Further thought: Suppose that the argument from mind to the existence of a self-existent Maker of the finite minds _does work_ but that a given philosopher has never considered it or hasn't seen a form of it that he is convinced by? Then, even if this argument works, he may not see that some form of theism is a consequence of his view of the mind. This seems at least a psychologically plausible scenario.

If the rejection of non-Christianity-friendly-isms is not sufficient to turn one into a Christian, some kind of ‘leap’ must be required.

Why should that be? Christianity contains substantive claims that go _way_ beyond mere theism anyway, so even if it were true that some form of theism follows from (say) the rejection of naturalism, it should be quite easy to reject non-Christianity-friendly philosophical -isms while not being anywhere close to accepting the particularity of Christianity.

Worth bearing in mind: Some forms of the cosmological argument are pretty spare as far as premises are concerned. If they work, then even philosophers who believe such boring things as the existence of the physical world, the operation of causal laws, the principle of sufficient reason, etc., but don't accept some form of theism are wandering around being formally inconsistent at _some_ point, yet no one thinks that one has to be doing "Christian philosophy" or "theist philosophy" to accept the PSR, etc.

I should add to the above: It should be quite easy not to be anywhere close to the particularity of Christianity without this meaning that a "leap" is required for accepting Christianity. I'd say that the particularity of Christianity is supported by historical rather than philosophical arguments. As G. K. Chesterton said, if God was going to save the world, he would have to do so by a historical story, historical events, not by philosophy.

"I'd say that the particularity of Christianity is supported by historical rather than philosophical arguments."

Lydia is exactly right.

To her comment I would add that theism is not the same as non-particular Christianity -- which simply does not exist. Christianity has no generic equivalent. Without the particularities, you do not have Christianity. It's the same for Yahweh. He has no generic equivalent, including Aristotle's.

His article is first and foremost an injunction to develop something very much like "Christian philosophy."

Edith Stein beat him too it by at least forty years. Her most famous philosophical work, Finite and Eternal Being, takes up this exact question: can there be such a thing as Christian philosophy? The book is a must read. Here is a quote:

If . . . philosophy in its exploration of that which is meets with questions which it cannot answer by making use of its own devices (as, for example, the question concerning the origin of the human soul) and if, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive knowledge of things that are, it appropriates for itself the answers given by Christian theology, then we have a Christian philosophy which uses faith as a source of knowledge. In this latter case we can no longer speak of a pure and autonomous philosophy. Are we justified in calling it theology? I think not.

Essentially, philosophy will never be able to answer the question that V'ger asked in the first Star Trek movie: is this all there is. In order to answer this question, properly, it cannot be limited to only matters it can understand, but it must accept that there might be mysteries beyond its limits. Even these mysteries inform.

As for Plantinga, when I was doing work on possible world logic back in the late 1990's early 2000's (which I was using in other, related, research) I looked at Plantinga's Modal Ontological Argument, since it used possible world theory and I was interested in Anselm's Ontological proof (not the subject of my research, just an interest). I came to the conclusion that there was a subtle form of begging the question in Plantinga'a theory and apparently (and unknown to me), Richard Gale at the University of Pittsburgh arrived at the same conclusion.

This is not the place to explain what I think is the the flaw in his theory (if anyone wants to know, we can talk), but it is relevant to the topic of this post, because Christian philosophy, badly done, can lead people away from God (a person who discovers the flaw in Plantinga's use of possible worlds will be less likely to believe in God than before he studied Plantinga). A muscular Christian philosophy must still contain within it the Great Commission, otherwise, it defeats its own purpose. It must also get the philosophy right.

The Chicken

Essentially, philosophy will never be able to answer the question that V'ger asked in the first Star Trek movie: is this all there is.

Chicken, if you’re suggesting that philosophy cannot know whether there exists anything beyond perceptible reality, you’re dead wrong.

In order to answer this question, properly, it cannot be limited to only matters it can understand, but it must accept that there might be mysteries beyond its limits. Even these mysteries inform.

You're killing me, Chicken. This is gibberish. How on earth does refusing to limit themselves to matters they understand and accepting that there might be mysteries allow philosophers to properly answer a question that just one sentence earlier you claimed they will never be able to answer? Oh yeah, because “mysteries inform” …whatever the hell that means.

George,

Philosophy can argue that there are things beyond perceptible reality, but to say that it can know whether something exists might be going too far. I know the philosophical refutation of logical positivism in science, but I don't know what you mean by know. I know that 2 + 2 = 4, but this is not always true (such as in a non-Riemannian metric space).

Mysteries do inform: they inform that there is something not understood or considered. That is knowledge and depending on context, it might be very useful knowledge. Nevertheless, to know that a mystery exists does not mean that one will be able to draw a complete understanding of it.. Only certain aspects of the mystery might be accessible, but even these extend knowledge.

In other words, if philosophers are going to be Christian philosophers, then some of their data comes from revelation and some of it is mysterious (why do you think they call them mysteries of faith?). A Christian philosopher who accepts the notion of the Trinity might be able to get farther in certain areas of philosophy than those who do not accept it, but the philosopher is still operating within a mystery. So, it is possible to work with matters one does not understand, but in a constructive way.

Oh and by the way, what I wrote wasn't gibberish. It was mysterious :-)

Anyway, go read Edith Stein. She says it better.

The Chicken

I thought the Stein quotation MC gave was pretty straightforward as far as it went. I would not necessarily agree with all of it, though. For example, suppose there is a good argument for a personal being who made the human mind. Then one _could_ say that the inference to that personal being has been made by philosophy's "own devices." (This is the point where I lose Michael Bauman's approval, I'm afraid.)

Mysteries do inform: they inform that there is something not understood or considered. That is knowledge and depending on context, it might be very useful knowledge. Nevertheless, to know that a mystery exists does not mean that one will be able to draw a complete understanding of it. Only certain aspects of the mystery might be accessible, but even these extend knowledge.

Chicken, I’m afraid you are wandering about in some confusion. What this situation calls for is some good solid scholastic reasoning:

Suppose there was an unknown object under a veil. I would still know some things about the object, however; for example, that it was under the veil and what its size was. In this way, the unknown thing would be known, and the unknown thing would inform my intellect. But here’s the thing: it would not be known insofar as it was unknown, but only insofar as it was known. To put it in scholastic terms, the unknown object would inform my intellect, not per se, but per accidens. What is unknown cannot be known per se, because if it were it would not be unknown. In the same way, a mystery cannot inform insofar as it is a mystery, but only insofar as it is not a mystery. So mysteries do inform, not per se, but per accidens.

There is no confusion. i realize the distinction you are making. It does not not necessarily exist when one is dealing with supernatural/natural items, such as Christ. The soul can know even though the sense can't. That's mystical theology.

The Chicken

It appears that we are using the term mystery in different senses. I mean the totality of the item named in the mystery, not just the part that is mysterious. You, I think, mean only the later by the term. A philosopher may only speak of the portion of the mystery (my use) that is knowable and expressible (your use), but he can't divide the mystery (my use) into parts except for the purposes of speech. In using the item at all, the philosopher is tacitly agreeing to accept all of the item, those parts knowable and those parts unknowable as a single entity.

You raise two interesting questions, however: 1) is it possible to know per se at all and 2) is it necessary to know per accidens to know per se. I am thinking of the classic idea in Evangelical Christianity that one must have a personal relationship with Christ. How is it possible for a modern person who has never seen or spoken to Christ in person and has only read someone else's accounts (with no description - they could not pick Christ out in a crowd) that has left much to the imagination be said to have a relationship with Christ? They could have a relationship with the idea of Christ, possibly, or their imagination of Christ, but since they have very limited data, per accidens, how can they have a living relationship with someone they cannot see or communicate with (in any measurable way).

It says in 1 Pet 1: 8

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,

How is it possible to love something you cannot know except in a very limited sense? Yet, this is what St. Peter claims is possible. Obviously, if one is having a personal relationship with Christ, now, it must be a relationship in mystery. The word mystery originally meant hidden, not unknowable. In order for God to be love, he must make himself knowable, since love wants to be known by the beloved. How is this possible if all we have is the slimmest knowledge of what is under the veil? Clearly, part of the relationship is hidden and yet, one should be able to speak about such a relationship, validly, in philosophical discourse.

You guys who are better at epistemology, can you correct or reformulate this idea?

The Chicken

All of the philosophers listed below are atheists, or at least I think they are:

Carl Ginet: non-agent-causal libertarian
Bob Brandom: non-naturalist who I assume is an atheist
John McDowell: same as Brandom
William Rowe: agent-causal libertarian
W.D. Hart: I believe he is a substance dualist
David Chalmers: property dualist or panpsychist, I don't really know

Can't think of any others off the top of my head.

MC, what you seem to be getting at is the idea that in the Christian understanding (indeed in most pre-Enlightenment thought) knowledge is not limited to that which is apprehensible by ratiocination. For a very helpful Christian primer on this issue see Andrew Louth's small classic Discerning the Mystery, originally published by OUP and recently reprinted by Eighth Day Press:

http://www.eighthdaybooks.com/products/Discerning_the_Mystery_An_Essay_on_the_Nature_of_Theology-50911-151.html

Beautiful, Bobcat, thanks!

Re: non-theists who reject materialism, this old post of mine offers some further examples:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/04/give-me-that-old-time-atheism.html

Some more atheist philosophers who buck the trend:

Paul Draper: agent-causal libertarian (I think);
Michael Huemer: substance dualist/agent-causal libertarian/moral realist;
Don Regan: non-naturalist moral realist;
Russ Shafer-Landau: non-naturalist moral realist;
Jaegwon Kim: flirting with property dualism.

So I think that this supports my point in the main post which is that the Christian philosophers who took these positions wouldn't have to say that they were doing it _only because_ they were Christians. Rather, they could just take that known philosophical position qua philosophical position and defend it.

Lydia,
I always considered a naturalist to be someone who denied (or at least doubted) the existence of a supernatural order. But you seem to be saying that an atheist can be a non-naturalist as long as he's not a reductionist. Are materialism and naturalism really synonymous?

I use them as at least approximately synonymous, yes. I think there's precedent for that among philosophers nowadays. The term "naturalizing" is pretty popular in philosophy and has been for some time, and it always seems to involve getting rid of or explaining away pesky things like minds, ideas, thoughts, and other "folk psychological" categories and entities. "Taking our ontology from the sciences" is one aspect.

Lydia,
Instead of "non-naturalist" how about "semi-naturalist," i.e., someone who is sceptical both of the supernatural order and reductionist materialism?

I think Johns Dupre and Searle both consider themselves pluralistic naturalists because they both think the natural order is all their is, but that it can't all be reduced, even ontologically, to the basic entities of physics. At least, I think that's their view.

Well, George, it's just that the terms "naturalist" and "naturalizing" really are used in such a way that a robust view of mind or other similar immaterial entities is taken to be incompatible with the projects of "naturalizing epistemology" and the like. Perhaps naturalists themselves would say that Cartesian dualists are "believing in the supernatural," but my impression is that this would simply be invidious name-calling on the naturalist side. In a sense, the naturalists have picked the fight with twenty centuries of philosophy, much of it distinctly not Christian nor even (personally) theist. Where does a Platonist fit into the "naturalizing philosophy" project, for example?

"Advice to Christian Philosophers" was written in 1984, when metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology supportive of or flowing from Christian commitments were a lot less popular than they are now. I don’t know what it was like to do philosophy at that time, but I imagine the environment for Christians was a lot more uncomfortable than it is now. I would guess that there was some significant pressure to hide one’s Christian commitments, or, if one had the temerity to argue for some distinctively Christian position on things, to make sure to qualify it by noting the ways in which it was defective. So I take it that in this environment, “Advice” had at least the effect, and probably the intent, of a rallying cry. And that’s a good thing.

But obviously that’s not all "Advice" was about. As you note, Plantinga thinks there should be such a thing as “Christian philosophy”. And this is where your problems start. For instance, you say that Plantinga, if asked “why not be a naturalist?”, would never say, “well, I’m a Christian, so that’s why I’m not a naturalist.” Instead, he would give an argument that purported to show a problem with naturalism. But the implication, if I understand you right, is that if Plantinga were being consistent in supporting Christian philosophy, then he would say something of just that sort. In other words, if you support the project of Christian philosophy in the Plantingan sense, then you won’t argue for the superiority of your positions or the inferiority of non-Christian positions; instead, you’ll just start with Christianity and go from there.

The problem with your characterization of Plantinga’s position, I think, is that you keep it too much at an individual level. For instance, you note that one of the consequences of accepting Christian philosophy is that you will just accept some contentions positions as starting points without arguing for them. And you think that that’s just not a good way to do philosophy. But I don’t think that’s what it means to do Christian philosophy. Instead, I think of Christian philosophy as a fundamentally social project. Doing Christian philosophy means that not every Christian has to have a strong argument for being a Christian as opposed to being a naturalist. Instead, some Christians can focus on that, but other Christians can just accept Christianity and focus on philosophical theology, or focus on how best to express one’s Christianity in the modern world, or whatever. This is what naturalists do, after all. Very few naturalists, in my experience, spend significant amounts of time defining naturalism and arguing for its superiority over non-naturalist alternatives. Instead, they figure people like David Papineau and William Rowe have got that covered, and focus instead on giving naturalist accounts of X.

Now, the above is admittedly an idealization. I imagine that there is probably no naturalist philosopher who has no idea about why he’s a naturalist. At the very least, he probably rejects religious alternatives because religious people are conservative, or because of the problem of evil, or something like that, and he probably asserts naturalism because he’s impressed by how much of our world natural science has been able to explain, and so he wants to see what progress can be made in making traditionally mysterious, philosophical topics into ones tractable for natural scientists. Moreover, because so many people in our world reject naturalism, it’s almost definitely true that every naturalist philosopher is going to have at least some superficial reason for rejecting non-naturalism and asserting naturalism.

Similarly, because so many philosophers are naturalists, the typical Christian philosopher is going to have some reason for rejecting naturalism (maybe the mind-body problem, or concerns about ethical objectivity). And similarly, the Christian will have some reason for asserting Christian theism. But just as many naturalists get away with being naturalists for reasons as simple as “science has explained things really well up until now, so there’s no reason to think that progress will stop”, a Christian should legitimately be able to get away with “Christianity makes my life better” or “that’s how I was raised” or “I just feel there’s some meaning to it all”.

I take it, then, that Plantinga’s view is something like, “as long as we have experts in the Christian community who deal with the question of why we should reject naturalism and why we should be Christians, then individual Christian philosophers don’t need to concern themselves overly much with those issues; they can be justified in being Christians as long as some Christian somewhere has good answers to these problems. But if the Christian community constantly sees itself as having to justify its existence, then all we’ll do is natural theology and critiques of naturalism, and other equally valuable projects like philosophical theology won’t advance. So let a thousand flowers bloom, and encourage individual Christians to focus on all manner of distinctively Christian issues that may seem irrelevant to the larger community of naturalists; after all, if we don’t do that, then naturalism will eventually get the edge over us, for the simple reason that it’s got more developed accounts of a greater variety of things.”

That's why I think you may have mischaracterized the relevance of the fact that Plantinga gives an EAAN. One of the things Plantinga has focused on is arguments against naturalism, so it's of course incumbent upon him to give them. But the point is, since Christian philosophy is a social endeavor, and not just an individual one, it's not incumbent upon (say) me to give arguments against naturalism or for Christianity because that's not where I'm focusing my energies. And I shouldn't feel as though I've got unjustified beliefs in Christianity because of that. As long as I can justify it to my own satisfaction, then I'm in an epistemically permissible state.

It seems to me that a non-naturalist atheist would be like a guy with one foot on the dock and the other in a canoe: all fine and good for someone making a transition from one to the other, but kind of an awkward position to maintain for any length of time.

As long as I can justify it to my own satisfaction, then I'm in an epistemically permissible state.

More on this later, Bobcat, but it occurs to me: Surely you don't think, "That's how I was raised" should be sufficient all by itself to justify Christianity to a philosopher's own satisfaction, do you?

Certainly not, Lydia. If you combine "that's how I was raised" with "and I see no reason to reject it" then you're probably in an epistemically permissible state, though.

If you combine "that's how I was raised" with "and I see no reason to reject it" then you're probably in an epistemically permissible state, though.

What if you reflexively discount or outright refuse to consider reasons that would cause you to reject orthodox theism of a particular tradition?

I'm obviously late to the party, but I'm sympathetic to Lydia's main point. There's sometihng (say) unsportsmanlike in engaging someone philosophically, and making your first premise the Magisterium. But I do like Plantinga's paper, and I do see what he's up to. It's more a matter of Christian philosophers not feeling the need to (over and over) take the dialectically subordinate position. Stop taking up that position, as I read Plantinga, and forge into other interesting territory. Nice advice, we should be more adventurous. This is not unlike Kit Fine's recommendation to metaphysicians to stop taking the epistemologists so seriously. If natural scientists had the epistemological qualms that metaphysicians (apparently) cannot shake off, then we'd be no where in natural science. So, take a lesson, and ignore the 'epistemic danger ahead' and 'epistemic road narrows' and 'epistemically slippery' signs that are always all over the road. I think this is close to Plantinga's point.

"What if you reflexively discount or outright refuse to consider reasons that would cause you to reject orthodox theism of a particular tradition?"

Then you wouldn't be in an epistemically good position. But I take it that reasonable disagreements are possible (which is itself a very controversial position! Seriously!), and if so, then it may be possible for, say, David Lewis to see no reason to give up compatibilism and, say, Peter van Inwagen to see no reason to give up incompatibilism. Similarly, it would be possible for Plantinga to see no reason to give up Christian theism and Rowe to see no reason to give up atheism.

"There's sometihng (say) unsportsmanlike in engaging someone philosophically, and making your first premise the Magisterium."

I don't see how to avoid this, though. Our dialectical position when engaging with one another is always in media res. Even internalist-foundationalist Lydia has to rely on intuitions that seem just obvious to her when dealing with externalist-foundationalist Alvin. The point is to do the best you can to make your own positions appear reasonable while finding out what in the other's person's set of beliefs forces him to contradict or be in tension with himself. Of course, that might be impossible, in which case you might not, ultimately, be able to get anywhere, at least with foundational beliefs.

Even internalist-foundationalist Lydia has to rely on intuitions that seem just obvious to her when dealing with externalist-foundationalist Alvin.

When you're arguing with an informed atheist about the problem of evil, say, it's just poor (not to mention, unimaginative) philosophy to begin with deep Christian dogma. You might finish the argument at Christian dogma (though, frankly, I doubt it), but you can't start the argument there. The best sort of philosophy backs into tendentious theses, it doesn't advance them. Here's an example. You'll sometimes find philosopher's offering a rebuttal to Plantinga's free will defense that begins with the assumption that compatiblism is true. That sort of argument couldn't be more boring. You've taken a controversial position down by assuming an equally controversial position. But if you back into a discussion about the relative merits of compatiblism--if that's where the discussion finally leads--then showing that it is on balance implausible isa reasonable thing to do in this context.

Christian philosophers are doing the same thing when they begin arguments against atheists with the assumption of Christianity (it's fine to make the assumption if your arguing with another Christian). Christianity may not seem controversial to a Christian, but then compatiblism may not seem controversal to a compatiblist. But the fact is that both are highly controverted.

Our dialectical position when engaging with one another is always in media res. Even internalist-foundationalist Lydia has to rely on intuitions that seem just obvious to her when dealing with externalist-foundationalist Alvin.

I don't blame you for this kind of insanity, Bobcat. You're just the victim. The real villain is Rene Descartes. . . him and his "clear and distinct perception." Next thing you know we have different realities for each temperment of mind; objective reality is abolished (or at best thought to be unknowable); and only subjective "reality" is considered worthy of study.

What a disaster.

To George R.:

Huh? I don't see this as the fault of Descartes. Maybe Plato, with his dialogues, where Socrates sees what propositions people believe, analyzes them, and then shows how they are in tension with other things they believe, but not Descartes, who tried to start with indubitable or self-evident foundations and tried to go from them using uncontroversial rules of inference to conclusions that everyone had to believe.

To Mike:

I think Christian philosophers use three approaches when dealing with atheist philosophers: (1) discover the basic principles the atheist uses and show how they lead to contradiction; (2) start with Christian premises and show that Christianity is a worldview that makes better sense of a wider variety of things than atheist naturalism; or (3) find points of agreement with the atheist, and use those to arrive at conclusions that the atheist will find unpalatable.

I agree that the compatibilist response to the FWD is generally boring, but if the compatibilist can show (a) that the FWD doesn't work if compatiblism is true and (b) that compatibilism is much likelier to be true than libertarianism, even if, or especially if, Christian theism is true, then this response can work. The problem is, (a) is false; as for (b), I'm not sure what to think; certainly Christian philosophers who are worlds better than I am (e.g., Lynne Rudder Baker, John Hare, Paul Helm) think compatibilism is a better fit with Christianity than libertarianism, but I think compatibilism is false, so even if (b) is true--though I'm not convinced it is--, so much the worse for Christianity.

Actually, I shouldn't say so much for Christianity. If I were convinced that compatibilism is much likelier to be true if Christianity is true, then I'd definitely have to rethink my intuitions about it.

I totally disagree with people who think compatibilism fits better with Christianity than libertarianism. So does Plantinga, by the way. He uses that very example in the paper.

Sorry I haven't had time to respond to all the interesting stuff going on here. Hopefully I will later this evening or tomorrow. I've been writing something else in a private correspondence exchange.

Bobcat,
I certainly did not intend to condemn dialectics as taught by Plato. I was merely condemning the modern philosophical notion that the thinking subject causes truth within himself, for which Descartes is very much to blame. However, I may have jumped the gun and read more into what you wrote than was there. Therefore, I withdraw that part of my comment that refers to you.

With respect to dialectics, the problem is that, unlike Socrates’ interlocutors, most people today will refuse to answer questions when they see that their answers would undermine their own theses. Therefore, sadly, you end up "arguing with a plant," to use Aristotle's expression.

Hi Mike!

‘If natural scientists had the epistemological qualms that metaphysicians (apparently) cannot shake off, then we'd be no where in natural science. So, take a lesson, and ignore the 'epistemic danger ahead' and 'epistemic road narrows' and 'epistemically slippery' signs that are always all over the road. I think this is close to Plantinga's point.’

It may be, but science is a self-correcting, evolving enterprise, where competing hypotheses are evaluated and consensus tends to emerge, unlike religion; indeed, it’s hard to see how alternative religions could be evaluated. You seem to acknowledge something like this when you talk of taking ‘a controversial position down by assuming an equally controversial position.’ As you said earlier about Christianity, science ‘makes life better’ too. But there’s no ‘epistemic danger’ in making a pragmatic claim: Adherence to a scientific theory is only tentative; the theory will be dropped as soon as a better one comes up.

Adherence to a scientific theory is only tentative; the theory will be dropped as soon as a better one comes up.

That's the idea, anyway. People being what they are, it doesn't always work out that way.

I do, by the way, think that rival religious claims can be adjudicated--at least in the case of Christianity itself. I'm an evidentialist, as I indicated in my main post. My qualms about "Christian philosophy" don't arise from the idea that adherence to Christianity is necessarily fideistic or non-rational, by any means. But as I said in the main post, if some non-Christian asked me in a philosophical context what the problem is with naturalism, I wouldn't start taking him through the historical evidence for Christianity. It would be unnecessarily roundabout.

I totally disagree with people who think compatibilism fits better with Christianity than libertarianism.

Let me ask a very loaded question then. Do you think it was free will that pushed Dr. Feser, Dr. Beckwith, and even Anne Rice(?) back into the Catholic faith after leaving it for a time? Or do you think there was a time during childhood when that religious structure became identical with their sense of place and home?

I can certainly imagine that what you mention, Step2, was influential. But since when do libertarians deny influences? If I start thinking about potato chips as I'm about to read a book, the associations in my mind among the concepts "potato chips," "relaxation," and "reading" may well _influence_ me in the direction of getting some potato chips. But I can resist that influence. I have free will. I am not simply a conduit for causes other than myself but am, as a personal agent, a true, originary cause of events.

To go back to some of the very interesting things Bobcat has been saying: I'm fairly uncomfortable with the statement, "Philosophy is a social project." But at the same time, I don't think it's illegitimate to conclude (though not without at least _some_ checking) that someone else has done the homework for you on a particular crucial issue. I'm pretty miserly, myself, with such assumptions, though. They so often turn out to be wrong, I'm afraid. :-(

But I'm just not seeing all of these "Christian philosophy" projects that are begging to be done and that require us to assume the truth of Christianity. For one thing, what ever happened to hypotheticals? Why could we not say, "Suppose that the God of traditional theism were to exist. What might this mean for set theory"? That's an example Plantinga gives at the end. He seems to be suggesting treating God as something akin to an "ideal observer" (an "ideal thinker," I guess) in set theory. Now, if the notion of a sort of Super-Thinker is really valuable to set theory, this could certainly be worth writing up and publishing. But does one need to assume that Christianity is _true_ to point out such a thing? Wouldn't it, in fact, be in a sense a kind of free-standing _argument_ for theism, if anything?

Or consider, again, that non-Christians can be interested in lots of questions in philosophy of religion. Here's another example: A year ago I went to a conference several days long in which philosopher after philosopher discussed Pascal's Wager and decision theory. I'm quite sure that Alan Hajek is no theist, but he gave a great paper on Pascal's Wager! He didn't have to assume the truth of Christianity to discuss it, either. That's what philosophers are like. They love working out the logical and even probability-theoretic implications of various views. And the ideas of God and even of an afterlife actually provide a lot of interesting fodder for philosophical discussion--for example, the ideas in decision theory generated by the Wager. As Robert Audi once said, "All philosophers should be interested in the idea of God, because the idea of God is so challenging."

Another thing: "Developing an X-ish account of Y" can get pretty boring when it involves truly assuming X to be true and then just talking to your in-group philosophical friends. Where it can be interesting is where it is really a matter of answering a purported objection to X-ism--namely, that it has no satisfactory account of Y. This, for example, is what Tim and I did in our Erkenntnis paper on mutual support: We showed how foundationalism can deal with mutual support. One _could_ call this (though it would make me squirm a bit) "developing a foundationalist account of mutual support." But we didn't do it in anything remotely like the spirit--"Philosophy is a social endeavor, so we'll assume that someone else has defended foundationalism and then just go around developing 'foundationalist accounts' of everything we can lay our hands on." On the contrary, this "foundationalist account" of mutual support was very much developed in the spirit of a defense of foundationalism against an initially very tough criticism/question.

So I think _all_ philosophers would do well to get away from this sort of pseudo-scientific model of philosophy according to which we all break up into little social groups, assume our assumptions, assume that someone else in the group has defended those assumptions, and then proceed to develop reams of "accounts" of everything in sight in the hopes that this will attract followers to our group when they get impressed by all the things we've allegedly "developed accounts" of. Naturalists should watch it on that, too, that's for sure, and to the extent that this is what naturalists are doing, I don't think Christians should be rushing to copy them.

One more point: Insofar as suggested projects in "Christian philosophy" are going to be squarely in philosophy of religion, do we really want all or most Christian philosophers to be specializing in philosophy of religion? Don't we want them to spread out a bit rather than all being concentrated in that one sub-discipline?

I doubt that Newtonian mechanics is still taught at school because anyone thinks it’s a true theory, or better than Einstein’s; it’s just a good-enough theory, and the maths is easier. Do people follow Christianity because it’s a good-enough religion and easier to follow than, say, Islam?

I’m not clear what precisely it means that ‘rival religious claims can be adjudicated--at least in the case of Christianity itself’: That followers of other religions or none are somehow unreasonable? Or that Christians who follow some denominations are somehow unreasonable? Either sounds like a bold claim.

As I said I agree with your take on Plantinga’s project. I’m not sure if a Platonist/realist mathematician can be described as a theist. But not all scientists or mathematicians are realists, and arguably few of them are. The point is once people get down to evaluating results in maths or science, appraisal seems opaque to metaphysical commitments.

I think there is evidence that Christianity is true and that religious claims that contradict it are false. If I didn't, I wouldn't be a Christian. As to whether other people are unreasonable, that all depends on what evidence they have, doesn't it? :-)

Hi Mike,

I'm curious about the Kit Fine advice you mention. Where exactly does he give it?

When you're arguing with an informed atheist about the problem of evil, say, it's just poor (not to mention, unimaginative) philosophy to begin with deep Christian dogma.

Is it not also poor philosophy to have long arguments about made up dilemmas like "the problem of evil?*"

*(The problem of evil is nonsensical for Christians because free will inherently creates the possibility that some will choose evil. The problem of evil is nonsensical for true atheists because true atheists are nihilists like Nietzsche and Onfray.)

Hi Mike T,

I don't think the Problem of Evil is a made-up dilemma. Job seems to worry about it, as does Jesus ("why hast thou forsaken me?" seems like a question with some serious existential import). At any rate, I think you need to say more to rebut the problem than just free will, if for no other reason than to explain animal suffering and natural disasters.

As for the problem of evil for atheists, well, sure, it's not a problem for them (unless you define evil as Susan Neiman does in her 2002 book, Evil in Modern Thought), but they can raise it as an internal problem for Christians.

But this is obviously a topic for a different thread.

Right Lydia, you did mention ‘historical rather than philosophical arguments’ before; I’m no historian myself. Do you think that, e.g. Schliemann’s excavations in Turkey and Greece provide evidence for the Homeric gods? I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘evidence’ in the context of supernatural claims.

I think that we need to differentiate between the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Natural Suffering.

Brain Davies in his book The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil says:

I might add that what are sometimes cited as naturally occurring evils are
not, in themselves, necessarily evil. We might spontaneously speak of the
evil of an earthquake in which thousands of people died. But earthquakes
themselves are hardly evil. They are simply naturally occurring events.
We describe them as evils in so far as they affect things of different kinds
(principally ourselves and other animals, though sometimes also natural
phenomena, such as scenic landscapes we value). Here I agree, though
would add to (with an eye, for example, on non-human animals and
scenic landscapes), what Nicholas Wolterstorff says as he writes: 'When
we speak of hurricanes, floods, and the like as evils, what we really have
in mind is their effects on the human beings in the region. Strictly
speaking, it's those effects that are the evils.'

“But I'm just not seeing all of these ‘Christian philosophy’ projects that are begging to be done and that require us to assume the truth of Christianity. For one thing, whatever happened to hypotheticals?”

I suppose every argument can be taken as a hypothetical, along the lines of, “assuming my suppositions are true, then my conclusion has to be accepted”, but a couple of things can be said to be problematic with taking the hypothetical approach. First, I think people are psychologically more excited to pursue projects they think are true, rather than possibly true. Of course, you’re not saying that Christians who believe the truth of their conclusions should think about them as hypothetically true, only that they should present them as possibly true. But this takes us to the second problem, which is that I think arguments presented as actually have more impact; it shows that the philosopher is willing to stand by his argument, that he thinks this is the way things are, and that you should think this is the way things are too.

Having said that, I should add that I don’t have strong feelings about presenting claims as hypothetically true; but few arguments are presented as hypothetically true, and it would be weird if Christian philosophers in general used the hypothetical approach while naturalist philosophers use the assertoric approach.

“Or consider, again, that non-Christians can be interested in lots of questions in philosophy of religion. ... I'm quite sure that Alan Hajek is no theist, but he gave a great paper on Pascal's Wager! He didn't have to assume the truth of Christianity to discuss it, either. That's what philosophers are like. They love working out the logical and even probability-theoretic implications of various views. And the ideas of God and even of an afterlife actually provide a lot of interesting fodder for philosophical discussion--for example, the ideas in decision theory generated by the Wager. As Robert Audi once said, ‘All philosophers should be interested in the idea of God, because the idea of God is so challenging.’”

I agree with you that working out various theses relating to God is fascinating, but a lot of philosophers don’t, and I don’t think they are less philosophical for all that. Some issues just don’t grab people (I find it hard to care about the problem of reference in philosophy of language; I’ve known lots of philosophers who don’t care about the problem of other minds). For one thing, many philosophers think philosophy of religion is like philosophy of werewolves; perhaps a few interesting issues could come up regarding werewolves, issues involving personal identity, moral responsibility, the metaphysics of substances, etc., but why waste time treating things that are obviously unreal and instead just devote yourself to dealing with issues that have obvious, immediate relevance?

I think this is especially pressing for philosophers who don’t have much confidence in their modal intuitions. For instance, I don’t know if werewolves are, in fact, possible; if I were a naturalist, I wouldn’t think that Chalmersian zombies are possible; I’m highly skeptical that swampman is possible unless God exists, and so on. So, treating issues that involve entities that don’t have anything to do with anyone’s actual experience could be a big waste of time because they could be based on an impossible starting point. And if so, then you’d be engaging in counterpossible reasoning instead of just hypothetical reasoning, and who knows what the status of that is!

“Another thing: "Developing an X-ish account of Y" can get pretty boring when it involves truly assuming X to be true and then just talking to your in-group philosophical friends. Where it can be interesting is where it is really a matter of answering a purported objection to X-ism--namely, that it has no satisfactory account of Y.”

But can’t it equally be said that trying to talk to everyone in philosophy can get boring too? Imagine how different ethics would look if ethicists always had to write in such a way as to engage nihilists. Or if you find that example inapposite, I think it’s sometimes quite interesting to see a Kantian analysis of X, where you’re trying to see what Kant would think about some contemporary problem that didn’t exist in his day.

“So I think _all_ philosophers would do well to get away from this sort of pseudo-scientific model of philosophy according to which we all break up into little social groups, assume our assumptions, assume that someone else in the group has defended those assumptions, and then proceed to develop reams of ‘accounts’ of everything in sight in the hopes that this will attract followers to our group when they get impressed by all the things we've allegedly ‘developed accounts’ of.”

But it doesn’t have to be either-or like that. Some philosophers will only talk to their in-group friends (for instance, Tom Flint does excellent philosophical work, but I don’t know that much of what he’s written would be of any interest to an atheist who thinks that all theistic discourse is scribble), some will talk to the community at large, and most will engage with both. It can be useful to talk just to your co-religionists about something, about what follows from a set of assumptions you all share, because the group of you will have a better understanding of what those assumptions are, and therefore of what they entail (witness the spectacle of dismissive atheists trying to explain how Christians think; it’s not usually very edifying).

“One more point: Insofar as suggested projects in ‘Christian philosophy’ are going to be squarely in philosophy of religion, do we really want all or most Christian philosophers to be specializing in philosophy of religion? Don't we want them to spread out a bit rather than all being concentrated in that one sub-discipline?”

Certainly we don’t want them ghettoized. But Christian philosophy is so vast that to do it well, you really have to specialize in mainstream philosophical fields. You’re just much likelier to do good philosophy of religion if you know general metaphysics really well, or general ethics really well, etc.

Overseas, do you think it's conceptually possible for there to be evidence for the existence of supernatural beings? That is, can you imagine any possible state of affairs, no matter how far from your own personal experience, where you think "oh, if that happened, then that would be at least some evidence for the truth of this claim [about the reality of supernatural event or being X]? And what do you think counts as evidence? Is it only sensory evidence, or evidence that is ultimately based on sensory data? Do you think the cosmological argument, if you thought it worked, would count as "evidence" for the existence of God?

Hi Bobcat!

I doubt cosmological arguments support the existence of a trinitarian God, just like I doubt the evidence unearthed by Schliemann supports the existence of Homeric gods. I called it a bold claim that ‘rival religious claims can be adjudicated--at least in the case of Christianity itself’. So, re the rest of your questions, my answer is I have no idea; that’s why I asked for clarification. Or did you mean to address your post to Lydia?

Hi Overseas,

I was addressing it to you. The cosmological argument certainly doesn't prove the existence of a trinitarian god, nor does it purport to. At least the Kalam version of it purports to prove the existence of a timeless, immaterial, very powerful, personal being. But ignore the cosmological argument. I was just asking you about evidence, and what you thought could count as evidence. For instance, if you and I and ten other people you trusted saw someone who we all saw die come back to life in what looked like an improved body, and he said that a supernatural being raised him from the dead, would you take that as evidence that something supernatural had happened, or would you claim that that is the least likely explanation, or not even an explanation at all, and that much more likely is something like a weird quantum event, or a mass hallucination, or the intervention of space aliens with powerful technology, etc.?

I think historical evidence can support a specific religion by supporting the occurrence of a miracle that vindicates a particular religious message and/or messenger.

At any rate, I think you need to say more to rebut the problem than just free will, if for no other reason than to explain animal suffering and natural disasters.

The problem is that from a Christian point of view, animal suffering is a byproduct of evil. Man introduced evil into the world, and that evil infected creation. Natural disasters, from a Christian point of view, are clearly the work of Satan in most or all cases.

I think historical evidence can support a specific religion by supporting the occurrence of a miracle that vindicates a particular religious message and/or messenger.

Not when you refuse to allow the possibility that a miracle in a competing faith is really a miracle.

Bobcat,

Perhaps you’ve heard of a claim recently about the discovery of Noah’s arc. I think people would be content to accept such an archaeological find as evidence for a flood. I’m not sure if the find counts as evidence that the flooding was due to God’s wrath/decision to exterminate humans. Similarly, Schliemann’s finds support the hypothesis of a Greek expedition against Troy but not e.g. of the Greek navy being held up because Agamemnon killed Artemis’ deer. So I don't see how rival religious claims can be adjudicated on the basis of historical/archaeological evidence; this is the point I tried to make.

Does this help? If not, please remember that you’re asking about a different claim, which I found bold and puzzling and which was made by someone else!

Overseas,

I think I'm understanding you a little better now. I haven't heard that something that fit the description of Noah's Ark was discovered. If indeed that is true, and if this ark were, say, discovered in the top of a mountain or something, and there was geological evidence of a great flood that happened around the time the wood in that ark is dated, then that would lend evidence to the claim that something akin to the Noah's Ark story really happened. I take it that this is your view? But that further particulars about that ark--say, that it had one pair of every medium-sized animal in the local environment--is not supported by that evidence?

If so, then historical evidence for Christianity's truth would be something like the synoptic Gospels in the New Testament. They all testify to, broadly speaking, the same event, and the people who make this testimony seem like reliable reporters, and their behavior changed drastically after the event, so inference to the best explanation would indicate that perhaps what they claim to have witnessed--i.e., a resurrection--really happened.

Mike T,

How did human actions introduce suffering into animal creation? Are you assuming that the earth is only 6,000 years old? If not, then how are we responsible for all the animal suffering that occurred before there were any humans?

Step2,

I doubt Lydia rules out miracle-claims from other religions a priori (unless those claims are, say, internally self-contradictory). Instead, I'm guessing that she's investigated them and found them wanting, either because there isn't enough corroborating evidence, or because the people who reported them don't seem to be trustworthy witnesses, or she takes them to have really happened but attributes them to the work of angels or demons.

Step2, I would never lay claim to having investigated every claim in every religion, nor anything near, but I do think Christianity has something rather unusual in the way of empirically verifiable _claims_. (For example, Muslims say that Mohammed never did any miracles. Mormons are expressly anti-evidential and place the most weight on the "burning in the bosom," etc.)

I don't rule out a priori the possibility of a miracle in another religious context, but so far, I haven't seen anything that makes me hold my breath waiting for something convincing. And as Bobcat pointed out, the idea that demons themselves might have powers that would appear to us to be supernatural cannot be ruled out once one has (as I believe that I do have) strong evidence for Christianity.

By the way, on another topic: I saw an implication today in some correspondence I received that William Lane Craig has endorsed Plantinga's idea of specifically "Christian philosophy"--presumably as Plantinga describes it in this 1984 piece. Can anyone confirm or disconfirm this? I was unaware of that if so.

Bobcat,
They all testify to, broadly speaking, the same event, and the people who make this testimony seem like reliable reporters, and their behavior changed drastically after the event, so inference to the best explanation would indicate that perhaps what they claim to have witnessed...really happened.

I want to know why this standard is acceptable for one faith and unacceptable for another. It only requires that people who witnessed the miracle seem like reliable reporters, described the same event in broad terms - but not exactly the same way, and changed their behavior in response to the miracle. I get the impression from both you and Lydia that you are both fairly skeptical when it comes to other faith's miracle claims, but once you've accepted one or maybe two Christian miracles, your skeptical filter goes on vacation regarding Christian claims. In other words, how many Christian miracles would you say could be attributed to demonic powers? If the answer is nil, which I suspect it is, I can't think of any reason someone who wasn't already committed to your beliefs would adopt your heavily biased explanations.

“I want to know why this standard is acceptable for one faith and unacceptable for another. It only requires that people who witnessed the miracle seem like reliable reporters, described the same event in broad terms - but not exactly the same way, and changed their behavior in response to the miracle. I get the impression from both you and Lydia that you are both fairly skeptical when it comes to other faith's miracle claims, but once you've accepted one or maybe two Christian miracles, your skeptical filter goes on vacation regarding Christian claims. In other words, how many Christian miracles would you say could be attributed to demonic powers? If the answer is nil, which I suspect it is, I can't think of any reason someone who wasn't already committed to your beliefs would adopt your heavily biased explanations.”

Personally, I think the standard is acceptable for everyone. I think the main way to distinguish between whether a purported revelation, assuming it meets the other criteria for reliability, is demonic or angelic or divine has to do with its content, i.e., whether it has a benevolent or a malevolent content.

Bobcat,

The presence or otherwise of medium-sized animals in the ark is unlikely to prove a sticking point. What’s at issue is whether the relic would be any better evidence for a story about God’s wrath than Schliemann’s finds are for Artemis’ wrath. You display a generous, inclusive attitude. You seem willing to accept the parallels and prepared to acknowledge all finds as evidence. You seem to suggest that e.g. the miracle attributed to Artemis - Iphigeneia is said to have been assumed in heaven and replaced by a deer just as she was about to be sacrificed on the altar - could be consistent with the Christian story if it was due to a demon the Greeks called ‘Artemis’. (How amazing though to attribute the wholesale extinction of virtually all life on earth to God and the rescue of an innocent girl from death to a demon!) But conversely, the flood story could be just as consistent with the Homeric story if the flooding was due to an angry Titan or other. The ability to account for or neutralise any evidence whatsoever can be seen as a weakness as well as a strength of a story. And anyway, this would entail that we cannot adjudicate among competing religious stories on the basis of the evidence.

I strongly suspect the writer of Genesis really did believe that God caused a flood but Homer did not really believe in the Artemis story. We do have some genre issues here.

I also think it's interesting, Overseas, that you focus on something so remote and difficult to check up on as Noah's flood rather than Jesus' resurrection.

I’m open minded, Lydia, but on what grounds do you doubt that Homer believed in Artemis in the 8th century BC when Socrates was charged with and found guilty of impiety in the 4th century BC? Anyway, what sort of genre do you think Schliemann took Homer to be when he set out to find Troy? Of course I doubt that historians/archaeologists who accept, post-Schliemann, the historic kernel in Homeric stories believe in Artemis or Iphigeneia’s assumption; but that’s precisely my point.

I have no particular interest in the flood story; as I said, I just saw something about it in the news recently. I wonder why you think that a flood is any more difficult to ‘check up on’ than a resurrection.

Um, because the resurrection allegedly happened long after the development of written history, because we have historical records from the time involved, and because everybody else besides the people in the ark supposedly died.

(I've read the story on the recent ark thing. I'm strongly inclined to think that it's a hoax. Looks like there are Christians who think so as well.)

Overseas and Step2,

I should say a couple of things: (1) I'm willing to believe that there were supernatural interventions that the Greeks attributed to the gods, but that were actually performed by demons, OR by angels, OR by God Himself; (2) nevertheless, I'm usually quite skeptical of such stories, unless there is a lot of evidence for them; (3) I'm willing to believe that events or commands that the ancient Israelites attributed to God were not in fact commands issued by or events caused directly by God (e.g., destruction of the Amalekites), and so were falsely attributed to God by them.

Finally, I think this is fascinating stuff, but on this subject I'm a total piker compared to Lydia and Tim (who hasn't posted here on this subject), so honestly, you shouldn't care about my opinion. They're the experts here, not me, so I'm going to refrain from further comment on this particular sub-topic of the thread.

I'm curious about the Kit Fine advice you mention. Where exactly does he give it?

It was an online lecture. I'll try to track it down.

Here's the Kit Fine (brief) lecture online where he recommends doing metaphysics w/o letting epistemology slow you down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdFz5qjHd4Y

OK, so Noah likely forgot to take contemporaneous notes; but events aren't ipso facto more probable if they are said to have happened in historic times than in prehistory. Is the resurrection story any better supported than the flood or the Trojan War, just because it’s placed in historic time? Why are a lot more people a lot more confident that the Trojan War really happened than that the Homeric deities are real, if it’s all in Homer?

You asked about the possibility of checking out something. That does, yes, depend on what is available to us, here and now, not to what one would have seen had one been standing on Mt. Ararat after the flood.

Remember me--I'm the one who thinks that since Homer was writing mythic epic poetry, he himself probably didn't think the deities existed and did all the things he was writing about, either. I also don't think the Beowulf poet believed in the Grendel monster.

Lydia,

I’m not sure why or if we disagree, so perhaps I’m missing something. Given ‘what is available to us, here and now’ it does seem easier to check a historical claim about a flood than about a resurrection; Bobcat mentioned geology, and there’s a whole lot more consensus about geology than there is over religion.

As I said, I fail to see on what grounds you’re querying Homer’s belief in the Olympian gods: The temple of Artemis in Ephesus is one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world! Are you equally suspicious of Homer’s belief that the Mycenaean Greeks ‘existed and did all the things he was writing about’? If not, why not?

Literary works don’t come with definite genre labels inextricably tagged on. Schliemann's archaeological project made people reconsider the genre of the Iliad. If Schliemann’s project did not also make people change their mind about the Olympian gods, there’s an explanandum.

Lydia,

I am willing to concede that there is suggestive evidence for the resurrection. However, it still doesn't seem to me that an evidentialist account of justification is up to the task of legitimating Christian faith, for the following reasons:

(a) The evidence, while suggestive, seems to me only to be strong enough to warrant Christian belief if one has assigned a relatively sturdy prior probability to God. And that, it seems to me, is not something which any amount of evidence can adequately do - I don't think the PSR is evidentially supported or self-evident, and thus cosmological arguments do not establish their conclusion from an evidential standpoint; teleological arguments don't suffice because if each physical event is explained by prior physical events, then there is an explanation of natural order to the first physical event; the moral argument fails because there is no evidence for moral truths; and even if these or other arguments were successful, I don't see how it could get you to God.

(b) I'm a skeptic about logical probability. On my view, evidence presupposes an externalist or contextualist framework.

(c) Perhaps most importantly, the vast majority of Christians simply have not studied natural theological or historical evidence for the resurrection, and it would be an absurd consequence of evidentialism (at least from my prior Christian standpoint) that these individuals are not justified. And in the Middle Ages, I'm not at all confident there was good historical evidence for the resurrection available to scholars, let alone the layman.

That being said, I do think Plantinga takes pluralism too lightly. But the reply doesn't seem to me to embrace an internalist framework, but to show how the Christian conception of God and ethics is superior to that in other religious traditions; to highlight the failure of other traditions in reconciling love and justice in the Atonement; and, in a distinctively Catholic way, to argue that the sacramental system is a more perfect reconciliation of God and man than what other frameworks possess. Historical evidence can also play an ancillary role, of course - and I'm not denying that pluralism might not undermine warrant for some Christians, but I suspect it does for many.

Well, John H, I'm certainly not prepared to defend in detail everything from the PSR (you seem to be tossing it out awfully lightly--did someone say "science stopper"?) to the moral argument (there is no evidence of moral truths???) just in this one thread, and you didn't even mention one of my faves--the argument from mind. And I don't know what you mean by a "sturdy prior" for the existence of God, but if you mean a _high_ prior, then of course I disagree with you that the historical evidence is insufficient without a high prior. Whether any of such arguments would "get you to God" depends on what you include in the concept of "God." Omnibenevolence, I would tend to agree, is a problematic one for pure natural theology. But some sort of even more spare theism has, I think, good things to be said for it on a number of the standard arguments.

I'm not sure I said anything about pluralism per se, but I would note that given all your skepticism about both natural theology _and_ the specific historical evidence for Christianity, it's rather odd that your own recommended approach involves only comparing highly contentful theological traditions on the basis of how well they do (according to some sort of unexplained standard) with notions like reconciling God and man. I mean, if there is no God and there is no Divine justice, then why are we even _talking_ about such issues, much less comparing how well religious traditions do on them, even supposing that we could tell in some a priori way what constituted "doing better"?

I would also add that it seems to me that it's Plantinga's externalism that allows him to be pretty brisk on the matter of comparing religions. After all, if belief in the existence of the Christian God is properly basic--what we're designed to believe without inference, where's the problem? I think this makes the whole Great Pumpkin thing a _huge_ issue for Plantinga. A lot of people seem to think that the notion of defeaters is an intuitive rescue from the rather suspicious epistemological "cheap grace" here, but I don't think it is when one considers that even what counts as a defeater is defined in terms of proper function. So if God has designed us so that we're properly functioning by just blowing off all objections to Christianity without much thought at all, then they can't be defeaters.

Even granting the PSR, I don't see how the cosmological argument can take you to a personal creator - some individuals like to say that we only know of two causes, personal and physical, but I just take that as a limit in what I can conceive of, not as an indication of possibility. I actually don't think there is any evidence for science as an enterprise; I'm deeply Humean on such matters. As for the argument from mind, I would respond in a similar vein to the answer I gave to the teleological argument: if every physical event or mental event is preceded by physical or mental causes, then you have a full explanation back to the first physical event (or mental, if the first event is mental). I'm not sure what evidence could be given for ethical claims; I just have no idea what it would look like.

At any rate, I do think belief in God is basic, and I think it has to be if the majority of religious believers are justified in their beliefs. Most individuals don't have the time, skill, or often intelligence to seriously evaluate evidential arguments for God or specific religious claims. Since belief in God is basic, reflection on the content of different religious traditions is of great importance. It should be noted that I don't think there's any evidence that I'm not a brain-in-a-vat, either; I just happen to believe that I'm not, and I don't see why that's irrational.

As far as the Great Pumpkin issue, I don't think there is a problem: no one believes in the Great Pumpkin, so why is it an issue? Perhaps a better example would be something like Qi or alternative medicine. But here I think its apparent that belief in such concepts is not deeply built into human nature, and thus has either some inferential character or is just wishful thinking. If it has an inferential character, one need only undercut the inference. But the real crux of the issue is that just because one might not be dialectical situated to convince or dissuade someone else from some proposition doesn't mean that one has epistemic parity with that individual - on an externalist view, after all, one's epistemic footing depends on the way the world is in fact.

John T,

I actually don't think there is any evidence for science as an enterprise; I'm deeply Humean on such matters.

Edward Feser done a good post critical of Humes views on Cause and Effect, he shows that the progress and coherence of modern science has made this view of Humes unsustainable. He is also critical of Hume's analysis of religion as well.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/06/hume-science-and-religion.html

Oops, I mean't John H, I apologise.

Right, Lydia. So flatly refusing to believe people you disagree with could be a sign of health on your part! And perhaps the Egyptians didn’t 'really' believe in an afterlife; they just built the Pyramids to break the monotony of the desert landscape.

Overseas, I meant what I said as a criticism of Plantinga. I'm an internalist.

I said I wouldn't talk about this anymore, but I can't resist. Overseas, I don't understand the "flatly refusing...on your part!" part of your comment. What's that in reference to?

Also, from what I've seen, you're edging up to the view that supernatural explanations aren't falsifiable in principle, but I'm not sure if that's actually your view. Is it? At any rate, Lydia has to have a response to that view, because Luke the common sense atheist and all the atheist commentators on his site seem to rule out supernatural explanations a priori because they think they're compatible with any possible bit of evidence and so have no explanatory value. I doubt Luke would go quite that far, because he's big into Gregory Dawes's book, and Dawes doesn't rule out all supernatural explanations, but he goes pretty close to it.

Phantom Blogger,

Feser's argument strikes me as a reduction to absurdity:
(1) If Hume is right about causation, you don't have any evidence for science as such.
(2) You do have evidence for science as such.
(3) Therefore, it is not the case that Hume is right about causation.

But of course, I would deny (2): my belief in science is itself derivative of a properly basic belief that the world acts in a predictable, regular manner; this may not be explicit in thought for most people, but it is certainly implicit. Such a basic belief can be reason-giving, but it isn't evidence-giving.

I'm not denying that belief in God might not depend upon other beliefs - say, beliefs about the order and contingency of the world - but I deny that these beliefs ground belief in God in an evidentialist manner.

Also, Lydia, to return to a point you made in connection with the Great Pumpkin - I actually don't think Plantinga's proper functionalism is correct. In fact, although I spoke as an externalist, I don't think the predicate "know" successfully refers to any property whatsoever. But I certainly think one has a duty to attend to defeaters (where a necessary condition of being a defeater is that it can undermine one's confidence in the believed proposition); I just wanted to stress that I don't think there's anything irrational about believing in God without having evidence for God.

Bobcat, I think Overseas is implying that evidence, or at least historical evidence, can never _confirm_ a miracle, which I suppose in some sense is even stronger than the claim that it can never falsify it. But he hasn't actually argued for that proposition. I gather his examples are meant to prime the intuition pump to the effect that if we don't allow the existence of the Greek gods to be confirmed (or confirmed above a particular level?) by the discovery of the ruins of Troy, we should admit that no supernatural claim can be confirmed by any historical evidence. That's a pretty hard sell. If the existence and action of a supernatural being gives higher probability to an outcome than its negation, it receives _some_ confirmation. Sometimes that confirmation may be only miniscule, if the Bayes factor is barely positive. Even mutually exclusive propositions can both be confirmed by a piece of evidence, so long as they are not jointly exhaustive. How great the Bayes factor is in any given case has to be beaten out by considering the particular circumstances. That's always complicated. One problem with skeptics is that they usually want to substitute some simpler rule of thumb for dealing with things on a case-by-case basis. There's also a terrific amount of confusion out there between what receives some confirmation and what we would _conclude_. (Just because there aren't enough cans of worms opened already on this thread...) As a Protestant, I think Catholicism probably receives confirmation from some miracle reports connected with some saints, but I think the confirmation is fairly minimal and not enough to overcome the prior probability, which is not merely subjective but is based on other evidence.

Hi Bobcat,

Don’t worry; Oscar Wild too could resist anything but temptation!

Look, I took issue with the claim that we can adjudicate among competing religions on the basis of the evidence, if, post-Schliemann, historians accept that the Trojan expedition described in the Iliad actually took place while remaining sceptical about the miraculous deeds of Artemis, also described in the Iliad.

I admit I fail to understand why people’s sincerity has been called into question, on what grounds and for what purpose: The suggestion that e.g. the Greeks could have invested in producing in Ephesus one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world in order to honour a goddess they did not ‘really’ believe in is both preposterous and unnecessary, in my view. It’s not some self-evident truth that deities exist iff people believe in them, is it?

That’s about it; I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the authors you mention. Of course neither you nor Lydia need to continue the conversation unless you want to.

It's not a matter of sincerity. It's just that the Iliad is telling a very long, very fantastical, and very involved story with mythic elements. I don't consider it beyond the realm of consideration that the author merely considered himself to be telling a story, though a story with places in it that were real places. That possibility is at least on the table, as far as I'm concerned, and I think to some extent it tacitly colors the evaluation of the involved and detailed mythological stories in the poem as opposed to the references to places. Also, the building of cities is itself a purely natural sort of event that happens all the time, which of course influences the extent to which the discovery of a city whose founding is described in a story that includes the involvement of the Greek gods confirms or does not confirm the existence of the gods. That is to say, the city itself could easily have come into existence without the involvement of any gods at all. The resurrection of a man from the dead--not so much. Obviously, one aspect of evaluating supernatural hypotheses as explanations is evaluating the explanatory power of competing non-supernatural hypotheses, so this should all make sense.

Also worth remembering: People who believe in deities can tell stories about them that aren't meant to be taken to be true. I have a lovely story that I tell my children (I picked it up from a book called The Unbroken Web) about God's "painting" the birds. My children understand perfectly well that I'm not really telling them that all the birds were originally the same color and that God painted them with a paintbrush. So even if an ancient Greek believed in Artemis in some sense it doesn't follow that every story he told about her was meant to be taken to be literally true.

It's just that the Iliad is telling a very long, very fantastical, and very involved story with mythic elements.

Now you're just taunting me. That is exactly the skeptic's view of the Bible.

Step2,

But that wouldn't be a very good view of the Bible, as it obviously has certain parts that are at least partly meant to be reports (the synoptic Gospels), at least one that may be satirical (Jonah), one the may be mythological (the first creation account in Genesis), one that is poetical (Psalms), etc.

Unless by "story" you just mean "account of something", as opposed to "consciously fictional tale".

Schliemann didn’t just find a city he called ‘Troy’, which, anyway, is a series of cities built on top of one another dating from the 3rd millennium to Hellenistic times; the late Bronze Age layer was destroyed by fire, which matches the Homeric account. Schliemann pushed Greek history back by a thousand years, counting from classical times. He showed that in the Bronze Age there were people in mainland Greece who had the organisation, wealth, power and technology to launch a naval assault against Troy. He found helmets lined with boar’s teeth and depictions on swords and vases of ‘tower shields’, as described in the Iliad. That the Mycenaeans spoke Greek was shown after WWII, when an architect who had served in the British intelligence managed to decipher the Linear B tablets. It’s a fascinating story, if you care to look into it, and I’m sure it will capture your kids’ imagination too.

I hear what you're saying but I still can't tell what's your explanation for the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus or why you think that e.g. in the golden age of Athenian democracy, about 500 judge/jurors would condemn Socrates, an Athenian citizen, to death for impiety on the basis of stories they didn’t take to be true. Homer was the standard textbook in schools all over Athens, Sparta etc., and, post-Schliemann, we've come to accept the likely historic basis. The ‘residue’ we don’t buy is the bone of contention.

Confirmation theory and Bayes seem to work better for series of events, where probabilities will tend to converge despite divergent priors. I’m not sure about singular events; I doubt priors can be uniquely determined in some non-question-begging manner. We don't want to jump into conclusions; such that I’m a ‘he’!

That is exactly the skeptic's view of the Bible.

IF that's what the skeptic thinks (genre-wise) about the books of Luke and Acts then, as C. S. Lewis said, he doesn't know how to read. Seriously, people who think that everything that contains any statement that a miracle happened can be thrown into a big genre basket labeled "myth" just don't have a clue.

I’m not sure about singular events; I doubt priors can be uniquely determined in some non-question-begging manner.

Good luck doing history, then.

Seriously, people who think that everything that contains any statement that a miracle happened can be thrown into a big genre basket labeled "myth" just don't have a clue.

"So, not being a magical thinker myself, I’ll believe it when I see it." - Edward Feser

Overseas,

"I hear what you're saying but I still can't tell what's your explanation for the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus or why you think that e.g. in the golden age of Athenian democracy, about 500 judge/jurors would condemn Socrates, an Athenian citizen, to death for impiety on the basis of stories they didn’t take to be true. Homer was the standard textbook in schools all over Athens, Sparta etc., and, post-Schliemann, we've come to accept the likely historic basis. The ‘residue’ we don’t buy is the bone of contention."

I, for one, am prepared to countenance the view that many people in Athens took the mythological accounts semi-literally; at least, I bet that they thought that the gods were real, interacted with mortals, and that at least certain parts of their myths were thought to be literally true. (I also think that there were probably a significant minority who disbelieved in them as well; for example, in Euthyphro and in the Apology, the notion that there are no gods was forwarded as a notion that Socrates' accusers understood, even though they disagreed with it.) However, I don't take those myths to be true because (a) they seem to have a lot more embellishment than the Gospel accounts of the resurrection; and (b) while I admit they may have happened, I'd need more evidence than we have to believe in them.

Dear Overseas,

I am not sure I understand what you are arguing. The Old Testament shows many empires that worshiped God's other than the God of Abraham. Issac, and Jacob. In the New testament, St. Paul goes to Athens and specifically acknowledges the existence of the Athenians belief in their gods. No one is denying that there were other gods worshiped.

Look, I took issue with the claim that we can adjudicate among competing religions on the basis of the evidence, if, post-Schliemann, historians accept that the Trojan expedition described in the Iliad actually took place while remaining sceptical about the miraculous deeds of Artemis, also described in the Iliad.

Schliemann made a judgment that the evidence revealed the existence of a city and that certain physical actions took place. Did he find any evidence that the supernatural existed as the Greeks reported? There are no miracles attributed to Artemis going on, today, that can be examined. The evidence back then was what? Your argument is time-bound. It goes no further than that moment in history. In any case, the fact is not that the Greeks believed in gods, but that they believed in gods who left nothing to prove their existence beyond the relm of imagination and there is no continuing historical continuity to the present. Did the Greek gods just vanish? Did they go to another planet as in the Star Trek episode, Who Mourns for Adonis, posits (what makes Star Trek any less true than Homer?).

The Christian God left a Church and it is the only one in history that has lasted 2000 years. If a god is merely of human origin, it will eventually die out. Even the Jews believed that.

The Chicken

The Christian God continues to reveal himself and has left tangible signs throughout history.

Opps, that last line was from a previous edit and was not meant for the argument I posted. It is valid, but I think Lydia might consider it a weak argument, based on what she has said earlier about signs, if I understood her, correctly.

The Chicken

Lydia,

OK, so the question is whether there’s a principled way to decide which miracle claims to throw in the basket labelled ‘myth’ and which in the basket labelled, presumably, ‘fact’. You seem to think this can be done in a unique, non-question-begging way; I doubt it.

You said: ‘I strongly suspect the writer of Genesis really did believe that God caused a flood but Homer did not really believe in the Artemis story.’ I repeat that I fail to see on what grounds you claim privileged access to ancient people’s minds. But how does it follow that if the writer of Genesis believed that God caused a flood, then God did cause a flood? The writer of Genesis may have believed loads of stuff we’re unlikely to accept today, but that there was a flood isn’t one of them. The interesting thing with Homer is that nobody took his accounts seriously until the late 19th century, when Schliemann did, and started his excavation project. People changed their minds then, wrt to some things but not wrt others. You seem to agree with the partition, but you insist the reason is that Homer did not ‘really’ believe in Artemis.

I think it would strike most historians as arbitrary, unreasonable and pointless to doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of non-Christians through the ages down to pre-Christian times; or to pronounce contemporary non-Christians as just 'bad historians'. Religious believers may believe their religion to be true, but people (whether I, you or Homer) can be both sincere and plain wrong; what’s new?

I suggested that Bayes is unlikely to help with quantified prejudices, if people start with different prejudices. For those who believe in the Bible, the resurrection story may be very probable indeed: The cost is that the argument is circular.

Bobcat,

I think we’re in broad agreement; but elevating the account of a particular miracle to the ‘gold standard’ of miracles exhibits bias. I'm fine with biases as long as we own up to them!

Hi Chicken!

Just saw your comment. You seem to come at a tangent, perhaps from Bobcat’s direction. Not sure what to say really; I wondered too earlier if Lydia thinks that gods exist iff people believe in them.

Are you suggesting it’s a miracle if a religion has had followers for 2,000 years? There are plenty of religions which have had followers for longer than that: The Jewish religion is one of them, not to mention Hinduism, Buddhism etc.

OK, so the question is whether there’s a principled way to decide which miracle claims to throw in the basket labelled ‘myth’ and which in the basket labelled, presumably, ‘fact’.

Well, no. Again, if I tell a story about, say, a genie appearing in the town of Leuven, and if I refer to various facts about Leuven in the course of the story, no one thinks that the accuracy of my facts confirms the existence of the genie. The reason for that is that my text isn't even actually asserting the existence of the genie. It's obviously intended to be fun fiction. The existence of the genie isn't even on the table as part of the causal chain leading to the existence of my story. It's just a made-up story, I know that, my audience knows that, and the obvious explanation for the existence of the story is merely my whimsical imagination. If on the other hand I claim seriously and ahead of time that a saint appeared to me in a dream and predicted the occurrence of the BP oil spill, the subsequent occurrence of the BP oil spill is some confirmation (though perhaps only slight) of the action of the saint. Part of the point here is that I _really am claiming_ that this dream happened. Hence if it didn't, I have to be lying or duped in some bizarre way. Those who know me well may believe that it is particularly unlikely that I would lie about a thing like that. Whereas there is no need to hypothesize that I'm lying in the case of the genie story, because everyone knows it was just made up and not intended to be taken seriously in the first place.

The God of the Jews is the same God as Christianity's. Buddism has no God. There is no singular Hinduism. Historical and moral consistency can only be found in the Church. Can't type more - using a Kindle. More, later?

The Chicken

Are there any criteria of proof that would convince a skeptic that Christianity is true? Christ, himself, said some people would not be morally converted even if someone were to rise from the dead. Faith (the Christian kind that goes beyond mere belief in something plausible) is a gift that must be given by God. If it were any other way to obtain it, he would have told us. One can be led to the threshold of Faith by plausible arguments, but the relationship of Faith with God is something that is beyond argument. This is straight St. Thomas Aquinas.

The Chicken

Would the opening line of your fun-fiction read ‘Sing, oh goddess (of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus/of the genie of Leuven)’? Would you invoke divine inspiration? I guess you could! But would you expect your isolated brainwave to become the backbone of Greek education, lead to the construction of one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, to the death of Socrates? Why would a father sacrifice his daughter to expiate the goddess of your fun-fiction? I’ve repeatedly identified several explananda but I’ve seen no explanation. Anyway, that people familiar with the town of Leuven may have a fertile imagination does not entail that the town of Leuven is genie-free!

I’m interested in what you say about dreaming: How you can tell between a saint and a genie or demon, for example; or how the experience of a trinitarian god may differ from the experience of a ‘plain’ one. This is what makes me sceptical of Plantinga’s ‘basic’ beliefs, over which we seem to agree.

‘The God of the Jews is the same God as Christianity's.’
Is this the identity of indiscernibles?

‘Buddism has no God.’
Need all religions be theistic?

‘There is no singular Hinduism.’
Is there a singular Christianity?

‘Historical and moral consistency can only be found in the Church.’
You can’t be referring to the ethics of slavery.

Since you seem to be in the mood, Chicken, I thought I’ll play along!

OK, so the question is whether there’s a principled way to decide which miracle claims to throw in the basket labelled ‘myth’ and which in the basket labelled, presumably, ‘fact’. You seem to think this can be done in a unique, non-question-begging way; I doubt it.

Why on earth would you assume that discerning miracles from myth would necessarily involve question-begging? Since people who believe the possibility of miracles obviously do not believe that everything is a miracle, but only those events that seem to defy natural explanations, miracles are never an a priori assumption but always a conclusion from perceived evidence. So why the charge of begging the question?

Could it be, once again, that the atheists and Humeans are merely projecting their own fallacious arguments onto their opponents? For who, in fact, is begging the question if not they who prior to all evidence judge all perceptible events to be natural? For the Humean, there is no criteria by which one might discern the natural from the supernatural. There is only the a priori assumption that miracles never happen.

Hi George R!

The concern is this: If people accept a report of a miracle because it’s credited to a deity they believe in, then it would be question-beggingly circular to quote the miracle report as evidence for the existence of that deity. Or if people who accept a report of a miracle credited to a deity they believe in, go on to reject a report of a miracle because it’s credited to a deity they don’t believe in, then the ‘evidence base’ for miracles becomes fluid/dependent on people’s religious beliefs; also full circle.

There have been suggestions that a religion could claim credit for each and every miracle report indiscriminately (e.g. by invoking lesser deities or demons). This would at least help fix or stabilize the ‘evidence base’, but it certainly wouldn’t help in evaluating competing religions. I’m not sure where the atheists come in.

"I think we’re in broad agreement; but elevating the account of a particular miracle to the ‘gold standard’ of miracles exhibits bias. I'm fine with biases as long as we own up to them!"

I hope it's not *just* bias that makes me think one miracle-account more credible than another. I think that there are several earmarks that any account miracle would have to meet to be reliable, and I hope I didn't pick them just because picking those evidential desiderata make the Christian resurrection account likelier. At any rate, I think things like: did a lot of people see the miracle? Is there a plausible natural explanation for the events taken to be miraculous? Are the people reporting on the miracle trustworthy? Are there indicia of reliability within their account? And other such things. There may be miracle-stories meeting those criteria better than the Gospel accounts--for instance, the miracle-stories surrounding the life of Padre Pio--but that doesn't mean that the Gospel miracle of the resurrection is therefore not a plausible story.

By the way, Lydia certainly doesn't think that gods exist iff people believe in them. She brings up the literary status of the Odyssey, etc., not because she thinks that if it's a report then it's therefore true but because if it's just a story, then it's not even supposed to be true--i.e., the descriptions of the gods' actions aren't even supposed to be reports. Further, just because he was right about Troy doesn't mean that he meant his account of the gods literally, as you seem to think. He also talked about Greece, but Lydia didn't think that meant that he meant his accounts of the gods literally.

I think what you're asking for is a set of the criteria by which one can differentiate myth from reporting, and then you want Lydia to apply this to the Odyssey such that all the right things come out as myth. I have confidence that Lydia could do this; heck, I have confidence that you or I could do this. We'd have to ask some friends, or look in the right books, but I bet such lists are out there, or there are at least some accounts out there. But I already spend too much time writing blog comments!

I would simply caution against thinking that a list of all relevant criteria can always be specified ahead of time. Certainly many relevant things can be listed, but historical evaluation is often unique. So, for example, the _reasons_ why we would not think that a particular report was a lie or the reasons why we would think that a particular report could readily have been a mistake will be very difficult to specify in advance. John Venn said that if his gardener told him that his dog ran away he would believe him, but if his gardener told him that his dog was mad he would not. Venn thought (he actually says this) that the reason was the relatively lower prior probability of rabies, but actually he also says that the symptoms of "fits" can mimic the symptoms of madness in dogs! This is obviously the more important point: the similarity (if one assumes that Venn knew what he was talking about here) between the symptoms and the assumption that the gardener isn't knowledgeable enough to tell the difference renders the Bayes factor equal or near-equal and means that the hypothesis of rabies does not have evidential traction. But that would have been pretty much impossible to specify ahead of time except under the very general rubric of "witness is/is not likely to make a mistake about the type of event in question" or something like that.

Bobcat,

I do appreciate your comment, in all the circumstances!

The problem of demarcation arises for those who accept some miracle reports and dismiss others, not for those who either accept or dismiss all miracle reports. So far, I’ve seen no evidence or argument for the claim that the author of Genesis meant accounts any more literally than Homer did. There’s plenty of stuff in both accounts that most people find incredible today, but relatively recent evidence has convinced most people that the Trojan War was a historical rather than a mythical event; and evidence may come about to confirm the flood story also.

So what’s the reason for being suspicious of Homer and credulous towards the author of Genesis? It surely can’t be that Homer gives an account of supernatural events, since so does the author of Genesis. So if the reason is that one believes in the God of Genesis but not in Artemis, see what I wrote in response to George R. above: Of course if one tinkers with the ‘evidence base’ at whim one can ensure that one’s favourite religion will come out as the better confirmed. But this would be the apogee of circularity and ad hoc manoeuvring. To admit that maybe the Greeks did perhaps believe in Artemis but they just didn’t ‘really’ believe in miracles is hardly an improvement; it merely confirms that maligning Homer is arbitrary and specifically targeted at skewing the ‘evidence base’ in one’s preferred direction. Why would the ancient Jewish people believe in miracles, but not the ancient Greek people?

People are fallible beings, who can be both sincere and dead wrong. I’m not inclined to discredit those I may disagree with or deny them the benefit of the doubt. There’s this drawing, for instance, of a duck looking one way or a rabbit looking the other way; some people see straightaway a rabbit, others a duck, though most can ‘switch’ between the two interpretations. But I like the way you preface your list of ‘earmarks’; it’s to your credit: Are several thousand Greek soldiers eager to sail for Troy good enough for you? As witnesses to Iphigeneia’s sacrifice I mean; or are they too many to have all had a good view of the altar? Perhaps Clytaemnestra bribed the priest so he’d switch her daughter at the last minute with a deer he kept behind the altar; I don’t know. But I know Euripides wrote a couple of tragedies about the incident; and that the Temple of Artemis is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I just find it ironic that one would dig a ‘Wonder-sized hole into history’ in the process of claiming ‘historical evidence' for a miracle.

Chicken

I somehow missed your comment at 3:16 yesterday! It sounds right to me that, at the threashold, one needs to be pushed or take a leap.

"The problem of demarcation arises for those who accept some miracle reports and dismiss others, not for those who either accept or dismiss all miracle reports. So far, I’ve seen no evidence or argument for the claim that the author of Genesis meant accounts any more literally than Homer did."

Well, one thing that even the people who wrote Genesis probably believed is that light comes from the sun, and that what separates day from night is that the sun is up in the day, and the sun is not up in the night. Yet in the first three days, there's not even a sun yet--that doesnt' come into being until the fourth day. So that tells you already that something is up, and maybe this part of Genesis (1:1-2:3) is mythological rather than meant to be a completely literal report. As for the Odyssey, well, early on in the book there is a quite detailed back-and-forth among the gods. I rather doubt that Homer thought his readers would think that he was at this meeting and privy to the remarks exchanged.

'I rather doubt that Homer thought his readers would think that he was at this meeting and privy to the remarks exchanged.'

Right, Bobcat. Except that, to be exact, it's not Homer who speaks but the goddess; I quoted the opening line of the Iliad above, I think. In the first line of the Odyssey he invokes the Muse.

Re your comment on Genesis, I don't know what to say. It might be convenient if all literature came with authoritative 'genre' tags dispersed within the text as appropriate. But I'm afraid we can only guess; if you think it's a draw, it's fine by me.

I rather doubt that Homer thought his readers would think that he was at this meeting and privy to the remarks exchanged.

That line of thought doesn't seem very promising. Is there a reason you find convincing that all of the different authors of the Bible were present during each event described and privy to every reported conversation?

As a diversion from the main thread, I find it strange that MC is such a Trekkie. Roddenberry was an agnostic and the Federation was presented as a purely secular humanist society. What is the appeal for a theist?

Hmmm...I think you're right, Step2, that's probably not a very promising line of thought. I still feel as though there has to be some way of demarcating myth from report, though. For instance, what I'm writing right now surely doesn't fall within the genre of myth.

I still feel as though there has to be some way of demarcating myth from report, though.

What this implies is nicely illustrated by David Hume (who, in his lifetime, was better known as a historian than as a philosopher). In “Of the Study of History” (1741), Hume told a story about how the same book can be read as both history and fiction. A “young beauty” asked Hume to send her some novels; instead, he sent her some history books—Plutarch’s Lives—but told her they were novels, assuring her “that there was not a word of truth in them from beginning to end.” She read them avidly, at least “ ’till she came to the lives of ALEXANDER and CAESAR, whose names she had heard of by accident; and then returned me the book, with many reproaches for deceiving her.” As fiction, Plutarch’s Lives was delightful; as history, it was unbearable. Hume toyed with the opposite idea in “A Treatise of Human Nature” (1739-40): two books, one a history, and one a novel, might contain the same truth. “If one person sits down to read a book as a romance, and another as a true history,” he wrote, “they plainly receive the same ideas, and in the same order; nor does the incredulity of the one, and the belief of the other hinder them from putting the very same sense upon their author. His words produce the same ideas in both.”

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/03/24/080324crat_atlarge_lepore