Minor Thoughts from me to you

Since we all know how hard it is after a good, long holiday to get back into the swing of things, let's start this series's return to form by refreshing ourselves on where we are in I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist's 12-point argument proving Christianity. Thus far we've learned:

1. Truth about reality is knowable. (Actually, we've shown it's impossible to know if this is true, but also that it doesn't matter, so Geisler and Turek are OK here.)

2. The opposite of true is false. (No argument from me!)

Leading us to their third assertion,

3. It is true the Theistic God exists, as evidenced by:

3a. the Cosmological Argument.

You're probably already familiar with the Cosmological Argument. If not, Geisler and Turek ably summarize this very old proposition (Plato and Aristotle were using it) on page 75, using the following syllogism:

_1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.

1. The universe had a beginning.

2. Therefore the universe had a cause._

It goes without saying (but I'm going to say it anyway - I'm just that kind of person) that the "First Cause" which Geisler and Turek have in mind is God. Only at this identification do they actually part company with many atheists. Most nonbelievers today accept the validity of the C.A.'s conclusion, as well as the evidence Geisler and Turek use to support it.

Strictly speaking, this means I really shouldn't have any problems with this step of their argument, right?

Here's my dilemma. Technically, the answer is no. Geisler and Turek prove to my satisfaction the universe had a cause. Not only is their logic inescapable, but their proof at least seems undeniable to my eyes: the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the universe's constant expansion, the observation of radiation from the Big Bang, and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity all point to a beginning for our little reality.

But: while I don't mean to spoil anything for you here, the twelfth and final assertion which Geisler and Turek will make in I Don't Have Enough Faith... is this:

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).

And if that's so, then all of the evidence Geisler and Turek use in this chapter is nullified; the great climax of their 12-point argument pulls its own feet out from under itself.

Because the Bible's account of Creation doesn't agree with the Big Bang Theory. Not at all. Even in the slightest.

IN THE BEGINNING

There is perhaps no story in the Bible as badly understood by modern readers as the Book of Genesis's tale of how our world was made.

This is in part a problem of education. For instance, when the very first verse in the Bible reads, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (NIV), the modern layperson should be forgiven for mistakenly thinking "the earth" refers to our planet or "the heavens" refers to God's kingdom above.

But the larger problem is that we are taught to take the account as the unvarnished truth. Since none of us can do this (accepting the text as it's written presents far too much difficulty for any educated adult today) but we also can't call the account untrue (most people have too much invested in the Bible being right to allow for its being wrong), we "rewrite" the story in our heads so as to lessen the cognitive dissonance we have to experience in order to agree with it.

Let's look again at the Bible's first verse, and add to it the second.

_1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters... _

Taken completely literally, those verses already start raising questions for the modernist. If the earth was formless and empty, how is there water - especially "the deep"? But as a Christian, I didn't mind because I easily (and I thought, reasonably) paraphrased the verses in my head in such a way that the troublesome terms became metaphors. "In the beginning God created our universe and our world. Back then, Earth wasn't around. There was only the deep obsidian of starless Space. The Spirit of God hovered in this black 'ocean'."

Then I just completely ignored the fact that God never creates literal water in the story but is soon manipulating it and strangely putting storing some of it above a gigantic dome He calls "the sky". Like most believers, I was really pretty apathetic about the particulars, at least whenever they weren't under attack from skeptics, so my personal rationalization of the Creation Account didn't require much polish. I just needed to figure it out enough to believe it.

My view of the text has since changed primarily because one day I gave myself permission to not believe it if it didn't convince me, then set out to obtain an educated answer. It didn't take much investigation afterward to learn that the reason God doesn't create water in the Book of Genesis is because throughout the Middle East, it was once commonly held that water has always existed. "The lifeless waters of chaos" are the eternal, uncaused element in Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology. The task of the Creator(s) is always to master these waters and bring forth life in their midst. The Babylonian god Marduk, for instance, creates the world by killing the ocean goddess Tiamat and splitting her in half.

So assuming the Hebrews thought similarly to their neighbors, which is very likely considering both the text of Genesis and the influence those civilizations had on Israel and Judah, it's pretty easy to imagine the Bible's point of view on what the universe looked like before God created our "planet": just pretend you're underwater, and so deep there's absolutely no light by which to guide yourself.

The light problem, of course, is the first to be fixed by God.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Then God creates some space in which to work:

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”

7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.

8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And now the Bible has just defined the parameters of our world; ours is the place in the universe God has protected from water with an occasionally leaky dome.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so.

10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

The trick God pulls in verse 10 - bringing forth land out of water - is extremely important thematically for the rest of the Bible. When in the Book of Exodus a "sea of reeds" splits apart to allow God's people passage, God is applying His signature move, the power over water which identifies Him as the Creator. It's the ultimate expression of His divine authority and thus, a fitting finale for His war with the Egyptians.

But I'm in danger of digressing, probably because I like literature a lot more than I like science and philosophy a la carte.

Above is the proper interpretation of how the world began in the Bible, its plain meaning to anyone reading it without an emotional need to make it square with modern science. Geisler and Turek undoubtedly disagree, but they are wrong. Yet regardless, they haven't mentioned the Biblical story of Creation in this chapter, only the Cosmological Argument, with which I can't find any particular fault. So should I give them a pass?

If only for the sake of continuing this series, I suppose so - but more and more, I'm wondering if I'm justified in my suspicion that Geisler and Turek are basically trying to pull an "end run" here. Such a strategy would certainly square with their immature conception of philosophical argument in general.

If so, though, it won't work. Logic can't validate something that's self-evidently false, as many Biblical assertions are. When logic seems to do so, you've only proven your logic's faulty.

We'll conclude Chapter 3 next post.

_Posting a wee bit early, 'cause I'm packing tonight and traveling tomorrow. _

We may be able to get away with speeding through Chapter 2 in no more than three posts. Most of it's just Geisler and Turek explaining the various reasons people have for believing religious claims and why the only good reason to believe a theory is because it best fits available data. They won't get any argument from me there.

If I were a less contentious man, in fact, we could probably skip this chapter altogether, since there's no point within it directly relating to G&T;'s 12-step argument that I'm unwilling to accept. But as they set out their perfectly sound arguments for why we should uphold only logical beliefs, they also touch on a few ideas held by "fundamentalist" Christians which are not only worth discussing, but also just kinda stick in my craw. So I'm going to take this opportunity to shake my fist at them.

ULTERIOR MOTIVES

The first of these ideas is that atheists choose not to believe in God for what Geisler and Turek refer to as "volitional" reasons, i.e. personal motivation.

"Many beliefs that people hold today are not supported by evidence, but only by the subjective preferences of those holding them. As Pascal said, people almost invariably arrive at their beliefs on on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." (54)

They say something similar back in the introduction:

"Although few would admit it, our rejection of religious and moral truth is often on volitional rather than intellectual grounds - we just don't want to be held accountable to any moral standards or religious doctrine." (36)

It will not surprise you that they are referring to atheists. They (and the majority of Christians, in my experience) believe that:

"Belief requires assent not only of the mind, but of the will. While many non-Christians have honest intellectual questions, we have found that many more seem to have a volitional resistance to Christianity. In other words, it's not that they don't have evidence to believe, it's that they don't want to believe." (30)

Let me just say here and now that this is utter stercus tauri - and a case of what psychologists call "projection" if ever there was one.

If anyone has the motivation to will themselves into believing something untrue, it's the Christian, not the atheist.

PASCAL'S SCALE

Geisler and Turek mentioned Pascal earlier. Let's go back to him.

As you probably know, Pascal is famous for his rather calculated decision to embrace the tenets of Christianity. He said that one should be a Christian because if you turn out to be wrong, you've lost far less by living the life of a Christian than you're bound to lose if you end up a mistaken atheist. After all, the Christian stands to lose some opportunities for fun and a portion of his income, but the atheist stands to lose eternal life (or rather loses the chance to enjoy it somewhere other than in a fiery netherworld).

Though most atheists (and Christians) reject his appraisal as an unsound reason to join a church, there can be little doubt Pascal correctly valued the respective promises of the two world views. By no remotely sane calculation are atheists more optimistic about the future than Christians. Whatever freedoms atheists gain by rejecting religious regulation of his lifestyle, they do surrender far greater benefits (or the promise of them) in return. They lose the comfort of having a great celestial guardian over them who will one day right every injustice they suffer. Instead they have to simply suck it up when faced with this world's evils, even though crimes are a thousand times more terrible to behold when your world view allows for the possibility the perpetrators might never be punished and their victims never compensated. They also lose the easy answers to the existential dilemmas that bedevil everyone else on the globe. Atheists have to decide for themselves what their dreams are, then run the risk of failing to obtain them in this life - with no hope of a second chance in another.

And oh yeah, did I already mention...? THEY HAVE TO RESIGN THEMSELVES TO DYING. That's an absolutely traumatic experience which the majority of Christians can't appreciate. Their theology neuters the concept.

The supposed sacrifices entailed in converting to Christianity - "[changing] thinking, friends, priorities, lifestyles, or morals" (30) - are a clear joke in comparison. They're also greatly exaggerated. When Norman Geisler writes "Christianity is free, but it can cost you your life" (30) I can only imagine he's thinking of Christians who live in the (non_secularized_) parts of the world extremely inhospitable to their presence. Those Christians, however, are a comparative minority, and the dangers they face are not unique - or even typical - to Christianity. In fact the great majority of Christians live their lives basically unmolested, in the comparative safety of their like-minded communities, living lives not vastly different from their fellow countrymen.

Now, you can say Christians who live unremarkable lives are wrong to do so. You can say they are not living up to Jesus' example. For the purposes of this discussion, that only strengthens my argument. It says quite a lot that atheists are unwilling to convert to even a supposedly watered-down version of Christianity, one divested of its most unattractive qualities.

Let me add also, concerning the so-called sacrifices involved in becoming a Christian: having to "[change] thinking, friends, priorities, lifestyles, or morals" (30) isn't only a problem faced by the religious convert. Every atheist who has "deconverted" from his or her faith, like myself, has had to make the same changes. What's more, new atheists don't necessarily have a ready alternative to their religious community available. Whether or not you believe Atheism is just another belief system, it's certainly not just another religion. No unified community of atheists really exists, much less an institution central to the life of every atheist, a la the Christian's church or the Muslim's mosque. This can make it much more difficult to meet new friends with similar views.

So can we toss the idea right now that your average atheist is simply shying away from the great burden under which Christians must struggle for the sake of Christ?

DOUBLETHINK

Actually, I doubt very much we can. Toss the idea, I mean.

The fact is, most Christians already understand the majority of what I've just written, and they speak often amongst themselves about how horrible it must be to not know Jesus. Shoot, evangelists among them talk to nonbelievers about it. It's part of the pitch. "Come and find rest."

As if to prove my point, Christian friends and family have recently been circulating around versions of Steve Martin's "Atheists Ain't Got No Songs" - which, let me just add, I do find funny.

(But you remember why the funniest jokes are so funny, right Guys? It's 'cause they're true.)

So why are Christians still talking about atheists' "volitional reasons"? We'll talk about it next post.