Right Reason

I’m going to put in some serious hours over the next few days and work on the next podcast episode. I haven’t picked a title yet, but it’s going to be about science and morality, or more specifically, whether or not there’s a basis of morality in science. By “morality” I do not mean to talk about psychology. In other words, the issue I’ll be discussing isn’t whether or not science can explain why people form some of the moral beliefs they do. That’s not an ethical question, it’s a psychological question. This episode will be about the relationship between morality and science.

I’ll be interacting with Sam Harris, one of the so-called “new atheists,” prolific writer and speaker against religious belief. He has proposed a scientific basis of morality, and his new book on the subject will be released later this year. I can’t say a lot at this stage as I’ll be listening to a series of talks by him on the subject tonight. Sit tight.

For those who don’t regularly read the blog, here’s another reminder about my trip to Oxford in late August. I’ll be speaking on religion in the public square at Merton College, Oxford University. It’s for the conference of the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion. I’m raising funds to make the trip (alas, amateurs like me don’t have academic departments to support them). Check out my original post on the subject if you haven’t, seen it already (or click on the flashing “help get me to Oxford” button on the right). I’ve really appreciated the donations that people have so generously given. As things stand at the moment, I’m just a little under halfway there.

One of the true giants of philosophy of the last 100 years, Antony Garrard Newton Flew has passed away at the good age of 87. The eighth of April 2010 was his last day.

He was best known during most of his academic career as a truly intellectually respectable proponent of what is sometimes called “negative atheism.” In fact Flew was largely the one responsible for the introduction of that term. He acknowledged that the word “atheist” historically referred to one who believed that God does not exist, but he asked for a gentler usage, where it essentially means an agnostic who is inclined to doubt theism rather than accept it.

That changed in 2004 when Flew moved away from atheism, and accepted that there was a God after all. Things heated up in 2007 with the publication of There is a God: How the World’s most notorious atheist changed his mind. Unfortunately, many in the atheist community, especially Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, responded to this change of mind by belittling and patronising Flew with suggestions that he had lost his marbles, that Christians were manipulating him into saying what they wanted, and that his change of mind was “sad.” I suppose there are no holds barred when it comes to the possibility of admitting that an intelligent person was convinced by the evidence that there is a God. Flew was strongly critical of the work of Dawkins, labelling him a “bigot”. Those close to Flew maintained that whether he was right or wrong, he knew full well what he was talking about when he explained his new position. According to Antony Flew himself:

My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. This is my book and it represents my thinking.

I wish he had changed his mind more than he did, for obvious reasons.

The world recently lost one of its finest philosophers.

In the appropriate sense, I am a sceptic (and no, my American friends, I did not misspell that). Some people claim to be sceptics when all they really mean (or at least all they accurately convey) is that they are passionately devoted to the thesis that God doesn’t exist and religion is bunk. They’re not really that sceptical. I think I am. If someone tells me that a miracle occurred at her local church last Sunday and someone’s filling was turned to gold (and yes, I have heard precisely this claim made), I doubt it. I’ve been to plenty of churches and meetings where there were preachers who believed in such things, and I’ve been to meetings where people claimed – right then and there, that a miraculous healing had taken place. Every single time it was false. I have witnessed no such thing actually take place right in front of me, and I tend not to believe such claims because I don’t believe that they are substantiated. But I said “tend.” I don’t dogmatically assert that they are impossible, and I don’t rule them out.

I am, after all, a Christian. I believe that God is real, and some of the most important facts of history are facts about miraculous events (most obviously and importantly, the resurrection of Jesus). Being as sceptical and cynical as I am, and trying as hard as I have tried to avoid the hysteria and gullibility that runs rampant in some Christian circles, I run a real risk – a risk that I sometimes, unfortunately, succumb to – of acting as though such things cannot happen at all. That’s not what I believe. What’s more, to the person who is not ideologically committed to ruling out the possibility of miraculous or supernatural things happening in the world, the evidence is there for any sincere seeker that such things have in fact happened. Setting aside for now the big kahuna – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth – there are other examples in history, including modern history as well. Are they common? No. They’re miracles and strange occurrences. If you do go looking for examples, you will find dozens and dozens (and DOZENS) of frauds. I’ve watched enough of them in person and on Youtube to have cringed hundreds of times at the credulity of some people. But serious examples are there. Here are three examples.

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As you may have heard, after ten years behind closed doors, the Shroud of Turin is about to go on display.

The book I’m reading at the moment, The Jesus Legend by Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd has had me thinking a lot about discussions over the historicity of Jesus and his death and resurrection, so although I’ve known about the shroud for years (I first watched a video about it when I was eleven or twelve), seeing it in the news piqued my interest.

The news story notes, “But experts stand by carbon-dating of scraps of the cloth that determine the linen was made in the 13th or 14th century in a kind of medieval forgery.” Reality is never, of course, that simple, and the facts are more accurately stated by saying that there are some experts who think that the Shroud is a medieval forgery, and there are some who do not believe that it is.

The case for the medieval origin of the Shroud of Turin was published as “Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin,” Nature 337:6208 (1989), 611-615. The late Ray Rogers, in 2005, published a critique of that re-dating of the shroud, arguing that the method used was flawed. Discussions of his evidence and other material can be perused over at the Shroud of Turin Story website. Another significant peer reviewed work is M. S. Benford and J. G. Marino, “Discrepancies in the radiocarbon dating area of the Turin Shroud,” Chemistry Today 26:4 (2008).

But, sceptics aren’t convinced. For example: “A Skeptical Response to Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turinby Raymond N. Rogers, Thermochimica Acta 425 (2005) 189-194,” by Steven D. Schafersman, Science Consultant and Administrator, The Skeptical Shroud of Turin Website.

I’m not a chemist and I have absolutely no expertise in analysing fabric samples. Explore those arguments for yourself and see what you make of them. As best I can tell, they indicate that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as an artefact from the first century that appears to depict wounds like those we would expect on the body of Jesus of Nazareth remains, from a scientific point of view, an open question.

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Today I spotted a (now inactive) comic called Cectic. Here’s how the author, Rudiz Muiznieks, describes his comic:

Cectic is the user manual for your brain, in comic-form. It was originally published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but real-life interceded, and as of November 2008 was only published (approximately) once every few weeks on Sundays. On January 24, 2009, Rudis announced that Cectic had come to an end.
Cectic is for skeptics. If you’re not amused, try Chick Publications, or Dan’s Pulpit (sent to me by a reader who referred to it as the Anti-Cectic).

The particular comic on this site that served as my introduction to Cectic was this one:

(Taken from http://cectic.com/146.html)

I was a little stunned at first. Not at the profundity of the point being made – anything but! I was stunned by the realisation that the author of the comic appears to genuinely think that he has scored a rhetorical point. Unfortunately, I’m fairly sure that many of the “sceptics” for whom Cectic is intended would have read this, smiled and nodded wisely, saying to themselves something like “Haha, yes, excellent point. You’ve really cornered those fundies on this one! Why don’t they see this?”

What irritates me further is the knowledge that Cectic isn’t alone. This breathtakingly shallow analysis is common – unless my experiences are atypical. So why do I take issue with it? Let me count the ways (OK there are only a few ways, but it was a short conversation!):

Firstly, the Christian in this discussion grants without hesitation that requirements that applied in the Old Testament, simply by virtue of being in the Old Testament, no longer apply today. He doesn’t make a rather obvious reply like “Wait, no we don’t believe that at all. Kidnapping is forbidden in the Old Testament but not the New Testament, yet we don’t think that’s OK. No, that is not the principle we hold to at all.” This would have stopped the other guy’s faulty analysis dead in its tracks, because its underlying principle would be rejected right from the start.

Secondly, the Christian accepts without hesitation the claim that the biblical case – the entire biblical case – that there is something wrong with homosexuality comes from the book of Leviticus. There’s no reference to the creation account, to the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the early chapters of Romans or to the first letter to the Corinthians, all of which contribute to the Christian understanding that is being criticised here. The fact is, absolutely nobody would grant that this claim about Leviticus being the only relevant source is correct. This is to say nothing of the way that it is assumed that in reality, Christians should regard nothing in the book of Leviticus as being of any value (not even “love your neighbour as yourself,” which is in Leviticus, right after the list of sexual sins, including homosexual acts).

Thirdly, the Christian in this comic says that Christian leaders and teachers (in this case his pastor) affirm that the above claims are in fact what Christians believe. But Christians believe neither of these two things. Further, it is suggested that the case is so absurd that Christians are likely to see it as silly, but continue to rely on it anyway on the basis of church authority.

There’s little (if any) point in actually interacting with people who think this way. It’s clear that they didn’t get to this point of view by honest observation or by actually making an effort to find out what other people really think, so it’s not like accuracy is regarded as particularly important by people who present stuff like this. Pointing out to people who present things like this that the representation is faulty at every step of the way is unlikely to be a productive enterprise. I suppose it’s (perhaps) revealing that this is the way a self-professed sceptic writes a “user manual for your brain.” What’s truly ironic is that it appears that this comic was presented to show that conservative Christians are the ones with shallow arguments that they haven’t really thought about.

Glenn Peoples

Those of you who might have occasionally read the enjoyable and insightful blog, The Internet Monk, will be saddened to know that the Internet Monk himself, Dennis Michael Spencer, passed away recently, on the 5th of April 2010 in Oneida Kentucky, aged 53, after battling cancer.

Rest in peace.

Props go out to Matt Flannagan. For those who don’t subscribe to William Lane Craig’s newsletter from Reasonable Faith, it’s worth doing. I’ve read it with interest for a couple of years now. In the last one, Craig makes some comments on his debate with atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, and whose name should pop up? You can read the newsletter online HERE, but check out the excerpt below:

By contrast my debate the following evening at UNCC generated a lot of light but very little heat! My opponent for this debate on “Is God Real?” was Michael Tooley, a well-respected philosopher from the University of Colorado (Boulder). He has recently published a very complex argument against God based on examples of certain evils in the world. In preparation for the debate I worked through his argument carefully and prepared a four-point response. To read my critique of his argument click here. (I’m indebted to Timothy McGrew and Matt Flanagan for very helpful interaction!) Tooley also came well-prepared to the debate. Indeed, this was his undoing, for he had all four of his speeches (including “rebuttals”!) canned in advance. As a result, he was utterly inflexible and so didn’t respond to virtually anything I said in my rebuttals. It was as if I didn’t even need to be there! So the debate turned out to be pretty one-sided, with me replying to each of his relevant points and him just ignoring me and plugging ahead with his prepared speeches. While Dr. Tooley would, of course, disagree, I think Christian theism came away looking eminently reasonable and credible.

Well well, whose turning heads then? Kudos Matt. 🙂

Every now and then when I’m looking at a particular passage of Scripture I’ll come across a verse, scratch my head and think, “what were they thinking”? I don’t mean the author, I mean those responsible for the translation. Now I’m not the world’s greatest Hebrew or Greek scholar by any means, so I’m not talking about translations where the actual meaning is debatable, depending on subtleties that are frankly beyond my knowledge or abilities. I’m thinking of the kinds of translational… well, blunders (or so it seems to me) that are frankly surprising. So I thought – Why not start a blog series on verses like that, and ask for input from the readers?

That’s what I decided to do, and this is the first such blog. This time I have the NIV (among others) in my sights because of the way that they translated Romans 12:1. In Greek, the verse reads:

Parakalo oun hemas, adelphoi, dia ton oiktirmon tou theou parastesai ta somata humon thusian zosan hagian euareston to theo, ten logiken latreian humon.

I’ve highlighted the part that I want to draw your attention to. The verse is rather literally translated by the King James Version as follows: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

That phrase “reasonable service” could have been translated a number of ways. It’s translated from the Greek phrase logikon latreian. The term logikos basically means logical. Not necessarily in a strict mathematical sense, mind you, but of course it includes that. It means logical, rational, or perhaps reasonable. In context it indicates that giving ourselves wholly to God as living sacrifices is the sensible, reasonable or logical thing to do (Young’s literal translation says “your intelligent service”). In verse 3 the writer gives his reason for saying this, starting his sentence off with an exaplanatory conjunction “for…” (the greek word gar): “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Given who God is, and given that we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we really are, and given God’s mercy towards us, the only sensible thing we can do in response is to give ourselves completely to God.

In the year 1900 the American Standard Version of the New Testament was published (followed by the Old Testament in 1901). This new translation contained an idiosyncrasy that I cannot find any example of in the nineteenth century or earlier. It’s an idiosyncrasy that is no longer idiosyncratic, because from initially only one version, it has spread to quite a few translations. Here’s that post-1900 innovation, represented in various translations. You can see how over the years that innovation has itself sprouted others that were based on it:

1900, American Standard Version: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”

1958, Amplified Bible: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, {and} beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service {and} spiritual worship.”

1973, New International Version: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

1989, New Revised Standard Version: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

1991, New Century Version: “So brothers and sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a living sacrifice to him. Your offering must be only for God and pleasing to him, which is the spiritual way for you to worship.”

2001, English Standard Version, “?I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

How did “your reasonable service” evolve into “the spiritual way for you to worship”? Here’s my question: Why did people start, in the twentieth century, to translated logokos as “spiritual” here in Romans 12 – but for some reason, only in Romans 12?

What were they thinking when they did this? Are they all just parroting the American Standard Version? Can anyone versed in New Testament Greek offer a justification of this?