1st Century fragment of the Gospel of Mark found

"In the latter half of the second century, then, between the time of Justin and Papias, and the time of Theophilus and Irenaeus, the Four Gospels were undoubtedly written or compiled." From theology.web, Link

One of the preferred Big Lies that atheists LOVE to reassure themselves with is the ongoing 'the gospels were not written till the 3rd or even 4th century at the earliest'. Although the above author is a bit more generous in dating the gospels to the 2nd century,according to Baptist Press, a recent find blows even this assertion right out of the water...

"Much of the biblical scholarly world has been buzzing since Feb. 1, when a New Testament professor made a claim during a debate that was news to most everyone who heard it -- a first-century fragment of Mark's Gospel may have been found.

It would be the earliest-known fragment of the New Testament, placing it in the very century of Christ and the apostles.

The claim by Dallas Theological Seminary's Daniel B. Wallace took place during a debate with University of North Carolina professor Bart Ehrman, an author whose popular books claim the New Testament cannot be trusted because the original manuscripts aren't in existence...

..It was dated by one of the world's leading paleographers," Wallace wrote. "He said he was 'certain' that it was from the first century...

.. Apparently, the publisher is E.J. Brill, one of the world's leading publishers of high-quality academic work. Presumably, the volume, when it appears approximately one year from now, will contain not only the first-century fragment of Mark but several other early manuscripts that have been found (though not dating to the first century). The Brill volume will no doubt contain all the technical details as to verification of the date, circumstances of the find, and an assessment of its significance. It makes sense for the details of the find to be withheld until the publication of the volume so that this data can be fully vetted by the scholarly community at that time."

No other literary work from the ancient world is anywhere near as well preserved as the Bible and yet it is still held up to exacting standards by critics who seldom apply such a standard of authenticity to other works which they unflinchingly accept on face value.

A Refreshingly Honest View of How an Atheist Perceives Morality

For those who are Political Science/Pop Philosophy enthusiasts like myself, today's in-depth article by Robert P. Kraynak is pure gold. In it, Kraynak takes a close look at the writings of American philosopher and atheist Richard Rorty. Kraynak demonstrats brilliantly how atheists are basically moral parasites, absorbing the morality of the culture they live in. For example, check out this quote from Rorty that Kraynak mentions...

"With intentional irony, Rorty describes people like himself as “free-loading atheists.” He also displays exquisite sensitivity to human dignity in making this admission: he imagines “a child found wandering in the woods, the remnant of a slaughtered nation,” and asks if such a lost person should have “no share in human dignity.” He explains:

'..it does not follow that she may be treated like an animal. For it is part of the tradition of our community that the human stranger from whom all dignity has been stripped is to be taken in, to be reclothed with dignity. This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by free-loading atheists like myself.... The existence of human rights, in the sense in which it is at issue in this meta-ethical debate, has as much or as little relevance to our treatment of such a child as the question of the existence of God. I think both have equally little relevance'.

Rorty’s point is that seeing a lost child wandering around as a naked, shivering homeless person inspires in him a strong sense of moral duty to “reclothe” that person with dignity (an elegant phrase), but not because he believes in God or in Kantian moral duties and rights. His justification is that he is part of a community of moral traditions inherited from Judaism and Christianity, which teaches us to care for a homeless person like the Good Samaritan would do. The problem is that our belief in God or rationally grounded moral duties turns out to be relevant after all: we have and need these beliefs, too, because we have been so taught by “the tradition of our community.” Rorty argues that we can subscribe to parts of our inherited traditions simply because they are inherited, but offers no grounds for why we can adhere to some parts and not others. He is thus a “free-loading atheist” because he lives off of the moral inheritance of the biblical tradition without contributing to it, and even while undermining it."

Kraynak goes on to point out the authoritarian streak prevelent in atheism through Rorty's musings..

"..'When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists ... we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank....

I do not claim to make the distinction between education and conversation on the basis of anything except my loyalty to a particular community, a community whose interests required re-educating the Hitler Youth in 1945 and required re-educating the bigoted students of Virginia in 1993. I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [free from moral authoritarianism] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.... It seems to me that I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause. I come from a better province.'

Rorty’s technique is to use disarming candor in referring to himself as a benevolent Nazi rather than a rational educator, and in admitting that he is not free of moral authoritarianism. The effect is to shock or lull the reader into overlooking the contradiction between claiming his views are merely contingent on his accidental upbringing (namely, that he comes from a different province than Nazis or his bigoted students) while also claiming that he is “benevolent” rather than “vicious” and serves a “better cause.” In other words, Rorty says that he imposes his political views on others simply because he is more willful, while also claiming that his views are objectively better than Nazi ideology or religious fundamentalism. Yet he feels no obligation to give a rational justification for the moral superiority of his beliefs: he simply enjoys the luxury of imposing justice without foundations."

There is ALOT of information in the Kraynak article and if anyone would like to offer up their thoughts on it, please feel free to do so in the comment box below.

Are atheists mean-spirited?

I'm sure there are plenty of tatheists out there who really could not care less that there are other people out there that believe in God, it's just that I don't run into alot of them on the internet. Much more often, I encounter the snarky know-it-all types who oftentimes refuse to answer hard questions concerning their own, pet beliefs when confronted with serous questions that challenge them.

In a recent article in World magazine, Janie B. Cheaney examines some of the circumstantial evidence that atheists tend to be self-absorbed and mean-spirited...

"Can I prove that atheists tend to hold a low view of mankind? There's plenty of circumstantial evidence. One is the position they stake out for themselves as more intelligent, courageous, and honest than the general run. Two is an argument that pops up frequently in skeptical circles: If God were such a creative genius, wouldn't He have done a better job? Especially with humans? Three is the scarcity of benevolent works founded by atheists. I'm sure there are some, but their names don't spring readily to mind like, say, Samaritan's Purse, Catholic Charities, and the hundreds of hospitals named for a Saint.

Seen on Answerblog.com: "How do atheists express their love for the rest of humanity?" Answer: "You don't need religion to express love, you complete idiot. Why are all your questions so ignorant?" Genuinely warmhearted atheists exist, but warmheartedness is not the first descriptive quality that comes to mind. The more vocal ones betray themselves sooner or later: To reject God is almost always to despise people."

The above quotation reminds me of a past entry by Vox Day who related..

"The atheists with whom I do have a problem, and for whom I regularly demonstrate a great deal of contempt, are the liars, the cheats, the deceivers, and the malicious. If one genuinely believes that religion is a crutch for the weak and psychologically needed, what does it say about those who are so eager to kick that crutch out from under those who clearly need its support? And, as an armchair intellectual, I find their willful ignorance of history, religion, and philosophy to be as astonishing as it is irksome. Intelligent? I don't even consider them to be educated. To claim that religion either causes war or is an important strategic element of war is to be every bit as ignorant as the apocryphal Flat Earth proponents so often cited; the significant difference being that the Religion Causes War Society not only exists but is even willing to expound their ludicrous and historically illiterate arguments in public."

Could Christopher Hitchins be in Heaven?

Could arch-atheist Christopher Hitchens be in Heaven? His Anglican brother, Peter Hitchens recently wrote that "he no longer held hope to convert his brother, whom he described as having "bricked himself up high in his atheist tower, with slits instead of windows from which to shoot arrows at the faithful.""

Russell D. Moore raises an interesting point in today's edition of Baptist Press concerning the potential for where the deraly departed Mr. Hitchens is possibly spending eternity...

"..I'm not sure Christopher Hitchens is in hell right now. It's not because I believe there's a "second chance" after death for salvation (I don't). It's not because I don't believe in hell or in God's judgment (I do). It's because of a sermon I heard years ago that haunts me to this day, reminding me of the sometimes surprising persistence of the Gospel.

Fifteen or so years ago, I heard an old Welsh pastor preach on Jesus' encounter with the thieves on the cross. The preacher paused to speculate about whether the penitent thief might have had any God-fearing friends or family members. If so, he said, they probably would never have known about the terrorist's final act, his appeal to Jesus, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). They never would have heard Jesus pronounce, "Today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).

These believing family members and friends would have assumed, all their lives, that this robber was in hell, especially dying as he did under the visible judgment of God (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). They would have been shocked to meet this man in the Kingdom of God. "We thought you were in hell," they might have said, as they danced around him in the heavenly places.

That sermon changed everything for me about the way I preach funerals for unbelievers. Now, death bed conversions are very rare. Typically, a conscience is so seared by then, so given over to the darkening of the mind, that the Gospel rarely is heard. We shouldn't count on last-second repentance.

But, however rarely, it does happen, and who knows? Perhaps you have relatives who, in the last seconds of breath, breathed out a silent prayer of repentance and faith. You might be as surprised as the thief's believing cohort."

Christopher Hitchens certainly was an interesting fellow. I'm sure that the former adjunct professor had some time to contemplate his fate in his final days. I hope for his sake all of the bombastic diatribes he launched against Christianity were mere bluster to sell books and that he examined his heart with a clear mind during his final days. Either way, he now knows the truth and may God rest his soul.

Is Hitch Ready to Flip?

Mark Judge posits that it's possible that arch-atheist Christopher Hitchins is close to accepting faith in God. Judge cites a Vanity Fair article in which Hitchins seems to reject 'a popular aphorism attributed to Nietzsche: “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” '...

"After enduring chemotherapy and radiation treatments that made swallowing unbearable and left his entire body a rash, Hitchens rejects Nietzsche’s slogan. “In the brute physical world,” Hitchens writes, “and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.” Hitchens speculates that some maladies are so devastating that it may be better to have not lived, while acknowledging that sometimes we push through the pain and reach the other side glad that we hadn’t given up...


Perhaps Hitchens’s admission that Nietzsche might have been wrong, even about something small, will lead him to a healthy curiosity about Christianity. Up until now, Hitchens has had nothing but bile for Christianity and all religion — including the religion of Marxism, which Hitchens, a former leftist, eventually admitted could not survive “the onslaught of reality.” But Hitchens’s attacks on religion were always propelled by the kind of fury that one usually finds in zealots and former believers; it’s always the ex-Catholics (Maureen Dowd, etc.) who are the hardest on the Church."

Time will tell if Judge's theory proves correct. The whole article is a great assessment of Hitchins and his writings. I personally think that Hitchins is too well vested in his own, pet beliefs to turn any time soon. But who knows? I hope that Time is a luxury in which Hitchins has in abundance in order to weigh his own flawed theories and beliefs against solid logic and reason and believe.

The so-called 'Hiddenness of God' Part II: Dispatches from an intellectually-dicey atheist

And the winner of the 1st Annual Caias Ward Award for Intellectual Dishonesty is..... Justin Vacula! Congratulations pal! (Caias, you were 1st runner-up and Tricia Woodcock wound up in 3rd place) Place your Caias high upon your mantle of accomplishments my friend. You earned it.

It seems that Justin can write an entire entry on the so-called hiddenness of God but when asked.....

"So you would argue that if a huge, gigantic, and beautiful sky-god was absolutely visible, audible and communication with people here on earth, that it would in no way cause "psychological pressure" to "do some act against [people's] will ". I don't wish to define your position for you here, but would you argue for or against this idea? "[?]

Yes or no, for or against, pretty please, with sugar on top. We already agree on the definition of coercion. If by 'sky-god' you seek further clarification, then let's say that I'm talking about the God of the Holy Bible."

What clenched this victory for Justin over Caias was when Justin poured it on at the end and blocked me from 2 different sites from asking him a direct question pertaining specifically to something he wrote. Even though Caias had to be asked a simple, one-sentence question requiring a yes/no response 6X before answering it, Caias only sought to be my the intellectual bitch by taking the easy way out and blocking me rather than answering a straight-forward question on one site. Kudos to you both though. I'm in awe of your respective intellects.

Me personally? I would have conceded the point had I been in Justin's position. He had several options of which none of them, I imagine, must have seemed particularly savory to Mr. Vacula. Concede the point, deny the obvious that it would fit the textbook definition of 'coercion', come up with an imaginative new definition of the word 'coercion', or argue in favor of coercion. Justin, I fully realize that you dedicated a lot of text to explaining your position, but none of it related specifically to the direct question I posed to you and I do not feel that I should have to defend arguments I did not raise or points I did not make. What are you going to do in the highly unlikely event that you ever debate someone the likes of a William Lane Craig? Block him? Ignore the question? 'Tis to laugh. That the intellectually-dodgy atheist slithers back to his echo chamber where he can preach to the closed-minded choir and not have to answer hard questions concerning his position is only par for the course in these types of discussions.

EDIT: GCT posits the following (albeit with no corraborating evidence) Quote "He (Justin) has answered it, multiple times, in multiple wordings."

I'll tell you what. If anyone can show where Justin answered my question in any of the evasive, non-pertinent responses he provided, I will take back every word of this entry. Please note that this offer is conditional upon Justin having actually answered the specific question I posed to him. For instance, Justin could have responded to the above question by changing the topic and asking me how we would discern such a manifestation as being from God or from alien technology and I could have answer him by saying 'Blue'. Although it can be considered a answer, it does not answer the specific question posed to me in this example. Good Luck!

The so-called 'Hiddenness of God': Dispatches from a clueless skeptic

Justin Vacula recently posited yet another, unique nail in the coffin pearl of wisdom to bolster his atheistic worldview, an argument concerning the so-called 'Hiddennes of God". Such arguments are nothing new and basically boil down to, 'if God exists, then why can't He manifest Himself in a manner that I can see him?'. Theists can argue that if one studies the fine-tuning of the universe to allow for life on this planet or if one were to examine the probability of specifically-coded DNA sequences arising by random chance, that the fingerprints of a Creator God are all over His creation. And yet, if I open my window in the morning and look outside, I don't actually see God Himself. In fact, there are no widespread claims that anybody is seeing God.



One big reason put forward by philosophers for God not manifesting Himself (assuming for a moment that He exists) is that God unmistakeably and clearly showing Himself to all would then diminish the overall amount of free choice we have when deciding what we would like to do. That is to say, that such a powerful manifestation would amount to coercion on God's behalf and God would rather that we behave and make our choices absent any sort of psychological pressure on people that such an appearance would entail.



One thing Mr. Vacula cannot deny is that people behave differently when they perceive they are being watched. That's not just me saying that as a general obeservation but, a cursory search would indicate, it's also what Newcastle University, UCLA and sciencemag.org are saying. I doubt that Mr. Vacula can deny that.



While involved in an online discussion recently, a certain clueless skeptic (MS) offered up the following 'questions' on this subject that I will attempt to answer....


1)Does not the bible 'record' such instances of God as visible, audible, etc? eg. Moses, the early Israelites? Were the Israelites coerced into accepting the covenant? Perhaps, and under yo...ur view, definitely.

The Isrealites were freed from captivity by the Egyptians and God made a covenant with them. God did lay down ground rules (laws). However, this is not like the topic of Justin's entry in that Justin is wondering why "-- since it is the case that theists profess God wants everyone to believe he exists – God simply doesn't unequivocally reveal himself so that persons can 'enter into a relationship' with God, no longer doubt, stop fighting one another because of religious differences, and go to Heaven."

However in looking at your question, it seems to me that the only alternatives would be that God's laws are revealed by someone other than God or that they are not revealed at all. That's a case you would have to make to convince me that either is preferable and the reasons you would think that is so.

As to when God actually WAS audible to the Israelites, exactly how did that work out?



2) Does not the threat of eternal hellfire amount to a coercion of worst order?

I find it only fair that we are forewarned of the consequences of our actions. It is explicitly stated that there are consequences for not obeying God's laws. A truly evil god would never reveal that there were consequences for certain actions until we stand in judgement and by then, it's too late. I doubt that you would argue that not knowing would be the better option here. There are two points I would like to bring up at this moment.

1) The temporal eminence of the threat. I think we could both agree that if we were to be held up at gunpoint by a robber and our wallets demanded of us, we would perceive such a threat as quite eminent and thus we would be coerced do something against our will like give our money to a stranger. However, if the robber said something to the effect like, "I have a blowdart in my hand and if you are shot with it, there is no antidote and you will die in 50 years", then we would assess things differently than if the threat were much more immediate as in the first example in which a firearm is used.

But, let's say that I concede that the threat of Hell alone, in and of itself, would still take away any free will in this matter, we would still have to examine another factor concerning the threat.

2) The epistemic eminence of the threat. What I mean by that is people do things everyday that can get them killed, but yet they do them anyway. For this reason, we see advertising campaigns urging people to "Buckle Up!" their seatbelts when getting in to automobiles and to quit smoking. It's not that people who smoke or don't use their seatbelts don't believe that they can die because these things, it's that somehow, if these things are shouted out from the radio/movie screen/computer screen/tv screen loud enough and especially, often enough, they can send a powerful enough message that can potentially alter behavior.

I would assert that if God were to "unequivocally reveal himself", make Himself known and constantly repeat the eminence of a threat, then THAT would be 'coercion of worst order'. Either you are Justin are free to tell me why this would not be the case.


3) Am I coerced into being in a relationship with other persons just because they are visible, audible, and present to my senses?

No. I assume that you are in relationships with people (assuming that you are), because you want to be.

This is ludicrous. If God expects a relationship, it is only natural that he would disclose his existence in an unmistakable way


I think you are either ignorant of, or forgetting the fact that such a revelation as described by Justin is not the only way we receive revelation from God. If either of you are willing to accept that personal revelation is a possible option, it would go a long way towards actually having a meaningful discussion here.



4)What's wrong with some general sense of 'psychological pressure' -- i.e. the pressure brought about by being compelled to acknowledge the existence of something

I think you were quoting me here. What I actually asked Justin was 'So you would argue that if a huge, gigantic, and beautiful sky-god was absolutely visible, audible and communication with people here on earth, that it would in no way cause "psychological pressure" to "do some act against his or her will "[?] which is a textbook definition of the word 'coercion'.

Rather than actually answering this question directly, Justin (I'm sure you were just going to mention MS) simply changed the subject, a point we will examine in our next blog post.

D'Souza: 'Why We Need Earthquakes'

During my recent debate with Justin Vacula, he brought up the problem of so-called 'natural evil', asking why natural disasters occur. Insofar as the example of earthquakes occurring that Justin brought up, I linked an article quoting the director of the German Space Research Centre Institute of Planetary Research and chairman of European Space Agency’s scientific advisory committee, Tilman Spohn. Spohn notes ...

"It is an idea growing in popularity among planetary scientists. Says Spohn, “plate tectonics replenishes the nutrition that primitive life could live on. Imagine a top surface that is depleted of the nutrition needed for bacterial life. It needs to be replenished, and plate tectonics is a method of achieving this.”

Spohn found that the further he delved into the issue, the more important plate tectonics seemed to be for life. For example, it is believed that life developed by moving from the ocean to the kind of strong and stable rock formations that are the result of tectonic action. Plate tectonics is also involved in the generation of a magnetic field by convection of Earth’s partially molten core. This magnetic field protects life on Earth by deflecting the solar wind. Not only would an unimpeded solar wind erode our planet’s atmosphere, but it also carries highly energetic particles that could damage DNA.

Another factor is the recycling of carbon, which is needed to stabilize the temperature here on Earth. Spohn explains, “plate tectonics is known to recycle carbon that is washed out of the atmosphere and digested by bacteria in the soil into the interior of the planet from where it can be outcast through volcanic activity. Now, if you have a planet without plate tectonics, you may have parts of this cycle, but it is broken because you do not have the recycling link.”

It has also been speculated that the lack of tectonic action on Venus contributed to its runaway greenhouse effect, which resulted in the immense temperatures it has today."

I personally thought using so-called 'natural evil' as an argument against the existance of God to be absurd, and on a couple of different levels. Last night while surfing the net, I came across this article by Dinesh D'Souza (above) which deals with another objection that skeptics might raise. D'Souza quotes "Rare Earth, a 2003 book by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee that traces the myriad conditions required for life to exist on any planet. In a sense, the authors—an eminent paleontologist and an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle—are discussing the "anthropic principle," which specifies the degree to which our planet appears fine-tuned for complex life." D'Souza goes on to note...

"Why didn't God devise a world that didn't require plate tectonics and consequently one that wouldn't have to put up with earthquakes?" In other words, surely God could have made a universe that operated according to a different set of laws.

Ward and Brownlee's answer to this is as simple as it is devastating. Such a world could have produced life, but it surely could not have produced creatures like us. Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure.

Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, and we appreciate this, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So, too, it seems that plate tectonics are, as Ward and Brownlee put it, a "central requirement for life" as we know it.

This is not to suggest, as the scientist and philosopher Leibniz once argued, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But ours may be the best of all feasible worlds, at least as viewed from a human perspective."

So there you have it, earthquakes are necessary for life. It also appears that hurricanes serve a purpose too. Gravity occurs through natural processes and bad things can concievably come about because gravity exists, but nobody is going around arguing that the planet would be better off without gravity.

The important thing to keep in mind, as philosopher Peter Kreeft once mentioned, is to be there for people when bad things occur in their lives. To be Christ for them as God's love shines through us as we comfort them in their time of need and despair.

The Curtis/Vacula Debate, Does the Christian God Exist?: Final Statements

As we wrap up or first of what I hope would be would lead to other debates, I would like to respond to some of the points raised by Mr. Vacula in in his 2nd rebuttal.



JD mentions a “fallen world” as an explanation/justification for malaria, AIDS, Indian Ocean tsunamis,and the like and says that “these things came about after the fall.”

More specifically, JD offered this up as a basic tenant of Christianity to show why Christians believe these things are the way they are. Whether or not they are 'justified' to be around would be another discussion. But suffice it to say that's it's all part-and-parcel of basic Christian theology. If Justin is unsure of the circumstances surrounding the fall, then I would suggest that he explore the faith that he left for answers to some of the hard questions that are sometimes raised in reference to particular elements of Christian faith.



JD notes that these events such as earthquakes never occurred because the alleged fall. Are we supposed tohonestly believe that earthquakes, for example, are some sort of 'recent (?)' phenomena that only started happening when humans 'came on the scene?'



Off-hand, I don't have a detailed answer for this. I don't mind looking into this further to see what the experts say. That being said, I really don't think this topic is a major point of contention among Christian theologians.



Consider earthquakes – theresult of moving of tectonic plates. Were tectonic plates in such a manner that they only started shiftingas they do today because of 'the fall?' One would assume that it is more reasonable to believe thatearthquakes always happen and have nothing whatsoever to do with human action



If you like, go to the link I embedded in my first rebuttal in the words 'plate tectonics'. It explores a new theory being bandied about that stating that plate tectonics are necessary for the formation of life.



Further, even if it is the case that egregious suffering exists because of the actions of humans, how is compatible with an omni-good god?



Three questions here. What constitutes 'egregious' suffering? Is it univerally understood to be 'egregious' across different cultures? Also, 'is all suffering bad'? I read something recently that physical trainers, dentists, etc. would disagree with the last question and I'm sure if we put our heads together, we could think of other examples.



JD believes, of course, that God set the natural laws of the universe...and this is one of the biggest problems regarding theists and the problem of natural evil. A supposed omni-good god created such laws that guarantee human suffering. As I said, we should not expect such things from an omni-good god



But you see, over the course of these exchanges, we haven't even defined what a 'good' God would be like. We live in a world in which gravity exists. Let's say, for example, a large coconut fell out of a tree as I was passing under it, striking me in the head and causing an injury. Is this evidence that God is not good? Which one should be eliminated in this scenario, gravity or the possibility of being of being hit by a falling object in which God would interject himself into the equation in every instance in which the possibility exists?


These questions are a bit more profound than slapping the tag of 'evil' on something without first defining what we mean by it. It's my understanding that the question of pain and suffering hasn't been debated in the finer philosophy departments for years. It seems that these things don't constitute a valid argument against the existance of God and at best, it could be said that 'the existance of pain and suffering is poorly understood by many people' and that's about it.


JD wonders what I mean when I use the term evil and seemingly objects to my use of the term


My specific statement was 'I notice that Mr. Vacula made the huge leap of terming these things 'evil' without ever explaining how he arrived at that conclusion. At no point does he explain the criteria that must be met in order for any of these things to be defined as 'evil''. I don't 'object to his use of the term, rather I asked for some clarification.



I don't understand what this has to do with my argument and this seems quite silly. Persons 'on the street' know very well what persons mean when there is talk about the problem of evil and the term 'problem of evil' has widely been understood throughout history



Actually, I don't understand why you term things as 'evil' without explaining why they are evil. If we are to use 'person[s] on the street' to gauge these things, what do we do when the 10 people I randomly polled out on the street if something qualified as truly evil were disproportionately lunatics with the ability to function in society? Or staunch moral relativists who aren't prepared to refer to anything as 'evil'? Or heavily influenced by pagan, pre-Christian culture that (incredibly) is held up as some sort of oasis of culture and reason but the facts bear out were shockingly brutal, murderous and callous?



Are not the Sermon on the Mount, the Decalogue and the Book of Titus more helpful in determining good and evil than random imbeciles on the street who might not know anything?



JD says that I believe evil counts toward evidence against an objective good



JD did nothing of the sort. JD said the exact opposite when he wrote 'I would posit the fact that Mr. Vacula views these things as 'evil' counts towards evidence that an objective good exists by which we can gauge these things. And if that objective good exists, then what is it?'



I'm willing to give Justin a pass here in that maybe he read something a little too fast, but the facts are, A) I asked if an objective good exists, by which B) Justin can base his terming certain occurances as 'evil' and he provides nothing of the sort and basically punts on the question like so many good atheists have done before him.



JD says that “a strict materialist would simply look at these things and shrug.” JD poses, here, a false dichotomy and a 'loaded' version of 'strict materialism. 'Why should it be the case that 'strict materialists' ought to simply shrug?



OK, I'll clarify. A strict materialist would not blame God for a natural disaster. But then again, how would Justin convince a strict materialist if such an occurance came to pass that it is 'evil'? It can be 'unfortunate', a bit 'sad' and a number of other number of adjectives, but why 'evil'?



Regardless of how we codify morality or talk about what is undesirable, the evidential problem of natural evil still exists for the theist. It is not 'up to me' to give an accounting for morality or explain why I wouldn't 'just shrug' at natural disasters.



Actually it is. You termed a natural occurance as 'evil' and yet you have not explained why this is so.



JD seems to 'blame the victim' here when referring to natural disasters (seemingly taking theresponsibility away from god). He says, “Should […] they carry at least part of the blame if it affectedthem or their loved ones? […] Did anyone put a gun to their respective heads and force them to live in a flood plain? Is it God's fault if they didn't do their homework?”



Actually, let me give you a much more pointed example to see if you actually understand. If I notice that a building is smoldering and I decide I'm going to sleep there tonight and during the night it becomes completely engulfed in flames and I wind up either seriously hurt or dead as a result, is that my fault or God's and why?



The main problem, though, is that seemingly no matter what people do or no matter where people move, natural disasters will occur...and there's not enough room, finances, etc for everyone to move to safer areas



I would phrase it like this, 'a natural disaster can occur most anywhere'. Now, if we have a mere quarter-inch of light falling rain (which we need for life on this planet) and no wind at all, yet I skid on the pavement, hydroplaning into another car causing injury to another, is it God's fault for inventing rain or my fault for not driving with caution? What do we give up here? Cars? Physics? Personal responsibility? Water being wet? Which one Justin?



This next one is my favorite though, on 2 different levels.



It is not the fault of omni-evil god that so many people have to experience goodness so much, but rather it is the fault of humankind. No one puts a gun up to the head of those living in the prosperous secular democracies of Sweeden and Denmark! These people instead should just move to third world countries and suffer!



1) I never claimed that all natural disasters are preventable by humans. I merely asked 'Do humans bear any responsibility at all in these equations whatsoever?'. Justin, can I enter into a building that's on fire, get burned, and then blame God? Or am I at least somewhat subject to the decision I just made and if so, to what degree?



2) Justin brings up 2 shining examples of "prosperous, secular democracies' (Norway and Sweden) without ever noticing that both of those nations are well within the area of the world formally referred to as 'Christiandom' for many centuries in which the factors that led to these countries enjoying such a high standard of living were put into place, completely ignoring that secularization is the relatively recent exception throughout their history.



JD objects to my mention of animal suffering and asks why I settled simply on animals. He suggests that it might be the case that plants experience pain (!). JD suggests that I might be moresympathetic toward animals than plants because animals have faces or brains (and some other considerations). I don't see why this is being brought up. Let me, for sake of argument, admit that plants do indeed feel pain. This further demonstrates my point! The omni-good god that JD believes inhas even more of a problem because he created plants that feel pain! How can we got about livingwithout 'killing' and consuming plants, one would wonder. Why wouldn't omni-good god simply'design' the universe in a different way?



Actually, JD pointed out your appeal-to-emotion fallacy by invoking poor widdle animals and asked why not object to vegetables being eaten also, a question you still haven't answered. I guess a better question would be "Why do we have to eat living things at all?' but you never framed your inquiry as such because it would then lose it's fallacious appeal to emotion. Such reasoning to me is as quite ridiculous. I mean, it basically boils down to 'Why aren't more bunny rabbits dying of old age' and 'Y kan't wee awl jus' eeet roks?', which are questions that hardly seem theological in nature and and are occurring at a whole level of intellect apart from me .



JD says that Satan is the god of the world to address my second and third arguments, but I don't seehow this is relevant.. if JD wants to appeal to the Bible and Satan, he needs to show that Satan exists


JD was merely showing how such matters fit into the framework of a Christian worldview to account for the way the world is and to demonstrate that it is at least consistent.


Finally, JD says “Christians generally do not seek supernatural explanations except perhaps on originof life discussions...” I don't 'buy' this for a moment. Consider the Nicene Creed which alone containsmany supernatural claims: God made everything, God incarnate was on earth, Jesus raised from the dead, Jesus ascended into Heaven, [Heaven exists], there will be a judging of the living and dead, the Holy Spirit exists, the sacrament of baptism can 'forgive sins,' etc. While this claim is obvious anecdotal, although it can easily be verified, individual Christians use God in part of explanations for receiving promotions at work, finding car keys, answering prayers, performing well in sports events,receiving Grammy awards, and so much more

Christians do not typically seek supernatural explanations for events that occur in the physical world. Christians do not believe that God[s] give them promotions their employer does, that demons lost their car keys, that they did, that God didn't personally write the Grammy winning song, that they did.

JD attempted to shift the blame away from God to humans (or to somewhere else) in order to respondto my evidential argument of natural evil. Such explanations fail because God ultimately allegedly designed the laws of the universe and could have made the universe in such a manner than egregioussuffering via natural disasters didn't exist. Additionally, God is supposed to be all-loving, so why wouldthis be the case to begin with?

Two things come to mind here..

1) I never attempted to entirely 'shift the blame' to humans but merely inquired to what extent ( if any) are humans liable for the decisions they make. It seems you refuse to answer this question.

2) If there were to be another installment of this debate, my question to Mr. Vacula would be, 'How would you design the world any differently if you had the ability to do so?'. I would be interested in his answer and then we could take it from there.

Justin also seems to be ignorant of one of the more basic tenents of Christianity insofar as our purpose and meaning here in this plane of existance. It certainly isn't for us to expect pain and suffering to go away any time soon because we know we will always have these things on this planet till Christ's return. The purpose of our meaning here is to "to glorify God", so that we may "enjoy him for ever". I feel that I am on fairly certain ground in stating this being that it is contained in both the Westminster Confession (read: Calvinist) and the Methodist church (read: Arminian). The elimination of such things as poverty and wars would serve to negate the existance of God and no amount of secularism interspresed with humanism and evangelical atheism is ever going to change that.

In order to read Mr. Vacula's closing statements, just visit his blog at JustinVacula.com

The Curtis/Vacula Debate, Does the Christian God Exist?: 2nd Rebuttals

Upon reading Mr. Vacula's first rebuttal, my thoughts on it are as follows... (His rebuttal can be seen at his website JustinVacula.com

he (JD) states “However, all I've done so far is raise two arguments in favor of a generic god.” I disagree. All that JD has done is mention some statistics about the supposed 'finetuning' of the universe and the 'improbability' of abiogenesis...and it simply doesn't follow from 'the universe is fine-tuned' that 'a creator god exists.' This argument appears to boil down to what is called 'an argument from ignorance' : I can't explain phenomena x, therefore god. Why should we be justified in positing a creator god as an explanation just because we can't explain a phenomena?

I would state that it's reasonable to believe in God's existance and the arguments in favor of it are better than the arguments against.

That's it. Reasonable to believe. William Lane Craig has credentials from "Wheaton College (B.A. 1971), graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984)" and yet with all of his training and education, Dr. Craig's arguments basically boil down to that there are better arguments in support of God's existance than against it, and audiences tend to overwhelmingly agree if exit polls from debates are to be believed. I'm not a theologian with my little Bachelors degree in Political Science and I cannot have Mr. Vacula prove the non-existance of God any more than I can snap my fingers and summon Him up for analysis and observation. I contend that the arguments favor the existance of God. A skeptic can always find something to be skeptical about. Justin then goes on to criticize my argument by positing....

Regardless, the fine-tuning argument fundamentally rests on a misunderstanding of probability. Instead of looking at the 'fine tuning' situation as 'the chances of this particular variable are so low,' consider auniverse that we can't even quantify the size/vastness of. Shall we say, that out of an entire universe, that life arising somewhere is improbable? I think not. Somewhere, someplace, life seems to be inevitable – consider all of the stars that 'die' that can 'create' situations conducive to life and all of the moons, suns, planets, etc. When we think of life, we think of carbon, but imagine all of the other possibilities that are not based on carbon!

And yet Justin offers up exactly zero evidence that any of these things are true and actually exist and thus he relies on mere hypotheses and theoretical scenarios. Is Justin, through the lack of any solid scientific evidences here, accepting the alleged existences/possibilities of these things by (dare I say it?) Faith?

This, again, is an argument from ignorance: 'I can't explain a phenomena, therefore God.' While abiogenesis is a difficult topic to think about, it simply does not follow that abiogenesis never occurred

I simply stated that there is no evidence that abiogenesis ever occurred. Justin says that it "simply does not follow that abiogenesis never occurred" and offers up no support of this statement.


This is similar to the universe in a way. The big bang model is an adequate model to explain the origin of the universe, but other questions remain surrounding the big bang and 'what [if anything] caused the big bang.' Although, perhaps, there is not a particular consensus about these questions (if there even is an answer), we don't doubt that the big bang happened (or that the universe exists)

I do not doubt that the Big Bang model is adequate to explain the origin of the universe and I find it can be completely compatible with a Biblical worldview.

When scientists operate, they operate under the banner of methodological naturalism: they assume that all that exists is the natural world and make claims about the natural world in order to do research and advance our understanding of the natural world. Instead of accepting supernatural explanations, as I outlined in my opening statement, we should look for naturalistic explanations instead because such explanations have great explanatory power in addition to naturalism being inductively justified

But Justin does not offer up any reasons as to why methodological naturalism is a far superior arbiter of truth by comparing it to other types of evidence that seem to be excluded here. Science is a wonderful tool for determining some truths and not nearly as effective for others and is fraught with all of the pitfalls conceivable when it is utilized by frail, politicized, agenda-driven human beings. For example..

Can scientific evidence be planted somewhere?

Can scientific evidence be manipulated to achieve a desired end?

Why are court systems always ready to admit eyewitness testimony but scientific evidence only if the judge allows? Probably because of the ever changing nature of science and models that are accepted today are frequently discarded tomorrow.

I recall one recent debate in which one party brought up the existance of opakis. They are notoriously wary of humans and science doubted their existance for many years until finally their existance was confirmed, despite multiple, reported sightings over thise years. Wouldn't science have been better served by accepting testimonial evidence from eyewitnesses in this case?

Now on to Justin's objection's concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A lack of explanation for, say, the experience of the apostles, the rise of the early church(which seems to be an argument here although it doesn't have a heading), the empty tomb, the womenr eporting, and lack of explanation (!) of the body of Jesus does not lead us to the conclusion that the Christian god exists

Is Justin fully aware that Christ Himself repeatedly stated he was divine? If it could be shown that he did rise from the dead, wouldn't that be an argument in favor of the Christian God who, by definition, is Jesus Christ actually existing?

Can we honestly and reasonably say that because a miracle happened, we can know the source of it or even distinguish what we think is a miracle from advanced technology we are unaware of?

If the gospels are taken as a whole, Jesus predicted in advance, at least on five separate occaisions, that he would rise from the dead. Wouldn't that help narrow down what the 'source' was?

Further, why even assume a source or say a miracle happened instead of saying “I don't know how to explain this.” How can we ever be justified in bridging the epistemic gap from “I don't know” or “A specific [or any] supernatural source is responsible for this phenomena?


I am perfectly willing to consider any naturalistic explanations for Christ instananeously healing the sick, raising the dead and Himself rising from the dead. With 2000 years of hindsight, I hope Mr. Vacula can offer up at least one, possible naturalistic theory.



a major problem here with the resurrection arguments, is that JD is using historical information to arrive at a theological conclusion

Why can't JD use historical evidence to reinforce his faith and discuss it with others?

Is a miracle a probable event? I think not...and I am sure JD and my audience would agree; we simply don't see other examples of resurrections throughout history and are very, very, very, very inductively justified in assuming that persons don't come back from the dead

Thus a miracle would help explain such an event if it actually took place, right?

..how can we say a miracle is the best explanation for any given phenomena when miracles raise more questions than they answer (what was the source, how can the laws of nature be violated/suspended, how can something non-physical interact with something physical, why would this happen here and not elsewhere, etc) and go against what we know about the world (we understand that people don't come back from the dead and have no other examples of resurrection). An explanation of “god did it” doesn't add to our understanding – and thus should be rejected as an explanation

I disagree. The Septuagint Old Testament was written three centuries before Christ was born and we can chronicle that Jesus of Nazereth fulfilled the prophecies contained therein. In reference to the coming Messiah we're talking on the order of, at minimum, 300+ of them. This belief need not be dogmatic and all are invited to search if it is true and to vigorously compare such predictions and fulfillments to other religions.

If JD accepts this information for proof of Jesus' resurrection, I wonder why he does not accept similar claims made by Muslims

Because the prophet Mohammed received any 'revelation' that he had alone, in a cave, and with no other eyewitnesses.

Mormons

Because a couple of alleged 'eyewitnesses' changed their faith later in life and also changed their testimonies. Check the link I provided on this in my opening statement for more.

Heaven's Gate members

Because I view suicide as being stupid and counterproductive and scripture is against it. Do not be a fool--why die before your time?" (Ecclesiastes 7:17b)

Unless you would like to try and convince me otherwise, of course.

Scientologists

Because their methods have been debunked by science numerous times.

Sathya Sai Baba followers

I had to look that one up. Apparently he claims to be reincarnated and I personally don't accept the concept. There might be other points of disagreement as well but I haven't looked into their practices really.

The fact is, Justin is making the common atheist error here of lumping all religions in together as if the were of equal weight when nothing could be further from the truth.

If atheists who gather at the 2012 Reason Rally arrive at a consensus that they believe so strongly that the natural world is all that exists that they all commit suicide at the National Mall following a speech from, say, James Randi, would this be evidence that naturalism is true? Of course not

I am unaware of any of the apostles or early church fathers calling for mass suicide to demonstrate that Christianity is true. So I do not agree that the comparison is accurate. Again, we are talking about eyewitnesses or people personally aquainted with them.

Willingness to die for a belief, or actually dying for a belief, doesn't show that the belief is true


The apostles that I mentioned actaully knew whether Christ rose from the dead or not. In this way it was more than a belief. They didn't read it from a book or come to this knowledge second hand and had to be brainwashed by it.

the women being at the empty tomb fit well into Gospel themes. For example, the marginalization of Jesus, Jesus' life being a mystery, Jesus identifying with the marginalized, and more temes seem to fit well with the women, so perhaps this is why the Gospel writers used the women in a nrrative

And I would contend that it would have been flying in the face of reason to do so being that their testimony was unacceptable at the time and would have counted agaisnt the credibility of the veracity of the event.

Also interesting is the fact that several of the Gospels have different messages regarding theempty tomb: was Mary Magdeline a witness (John 20:1)?, was it a group of women (Mark 16:1 andMatthew 28:1 have different women)?

If all four gospels lined up on every single fact, there would undoubtedly be accusations of copying from one another. In reference to the alleged discrepencies, historian Michael Grant concluded that the narratives do have differences, however.."if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty."

I believe that and if you would like to examine this topic from a reliability standpoint, I think it would be interesting.

JD also mentions the growth of the early church and seemingly argues that the growth of the church points to the fact that Jesus' resurrection is true. It simply does not follow. As I previously mentioned,there are all sorts of 'believers' around the world especially in the light of claims that we don't believeare true. Consider Islam and Hinduism, for example. JD and I don't believe Allah or several Hindu godsexist...and we also realize that many followers of these religions exist. Why, then, should the case bedifferent with Christianity?

The reason I mentioned this is because in the very early church, people in Jerusalem would have known if there was an obvious competeing claim as to what happened to the body of Jesus and they chose to join the church.

Anyway, let's assume that the empty tomb is a historical fact for sake of argument. “Jesus raised fromthe dead” simply does not follow from “Jesus' body was put in a tomb and then later the body was no longer there”

This doesn't mention multiple post-mortem appearances. It's not like they 'lost' the body or something.

Just because persons were saying things does not mean that such things were true (even if many persons believed such a claim). Once again, simply look to Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, etc. Persons believe the story of Joseph Smith and there are somany followers! Mormons will tell you that there's no explanation for the golden plates and that persons have verified the accuracy of Smith's claims just like Christians will say

And Christians overwhelmingly reject Mormonism and Islam as competeing claims. We've already gone over this. Their evidence sucks. I would like to compare the evidence for the Resurrection against the evidences for any of these other religions. We would need a whole new debate to do that though.

The Curtis/Vacula Debate, Does the Christian God Exist?: 1st Rebuttals

This post will constitute my first of two rebuttals that will take place in the debate between me and Justin Vacula. In order to see Justin's rebuttal to my opening statement (which appears below this thread), just visit his website at JustinVacula.com

While perusing Mr. Vacula's opening statement there were a few items that caught my attention and I will list them for his consideration and comment.

Can one honestly believe that malaria, AIDS, Indian Ocean Tsunamis, Chilean earthquakes, andthe like are the work of an omni-good god?

While we are discussing the concept of whether the Christian concept of a god exists, it is important to bear in mind that these things occur, according to orthodox Christian doctrine, because we all live in a fallen world. These things came about after the fall, this world/plane of existance isn't paradise, and the existance of these aforementioned items only serve to reinforce and help prove that contention. If the narrative was such that these things did not exist, then it would seem contradictory that they do, however, that is not the case.

I contend that 'natural evil' – earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, animal suffering, and the like – is incompatible with belief in an omni-good god and serves as a defeater to Christian belief

I notice that Mr. Vacula made the huge leap of terming these things 'evil' without ever explaining how he arrived at that conclusion. At no point does he explain the criteria that must be met in order for any of these things to be defined as 'evil'. I would posit the fact that Mr. Vacula views these things as 'evil' counts towards evidence that an objective good exists by which we can gauge these things. And if that objective good exists, then what is it?

A strict materialist would simply look at these things and shrug. An earthquake causing destruction? A seismic event that is the result of plate tectonics, and why did they make the decision to live near a fault line anyway? Should they be shaking their fist at God or do they carry at least part of the blame if it affected them or their loved ones? Same goes for a flood wiping out a bunch of houses and displacing hundreds, the materialist would think that it's the result of a meteorological event such as heavy rain. Did anyone put a gun to their respective heads and force them to live in a flood plain? Is it God's fault if the didn't do their homework? Do humans bear any responsibility at all in these equations whatsoever?

Again, by what standard are these things termed 'evil'? If a tsunami occurs out at sea and hardly anyone notices, is it 'evil'? If a tornado doesn't actually kill anyone, but does delay my flight out of Tulsa for an hour and a half, is it 'evil' or merely a 'nuisance'? If a hurricane causes some property damage and minor abrasions, is it 'evil' or just 'not very nice'?

I do hope that some measurement for clarification is offered up by Mr. Vacula to help us understand how he determined this. And furthermore that any clarification put forward isn't based on anything so highly subjective as personal feelings, experience or opinion. Because after all, we know that these things indeed vary greatly from person to person. We'll see.

In addition to human suffering, an egregious amount of animal suffering exists – ecosystems thrive because animals kill other animals, often in a slow and painful fashion. Does this seem to be the work of an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing being?

You know what? That's quite interesting. I don't recall that I have ever heard of the so-called suffering of animals objection that Mr. Vacula raises as being a valid argument against the existence of God.

But I wonder if we actually know how much these animals are truly 'suffering'. For instance, some animals inject a numbing venom so their prey doesn't feel the pain of being bitten. But setting aside the uncertain level of pain that some animals feel when being eaten by others, I would like to know why Justin simply settled on animals. I mean, who is going to stand up for the vegetables? What was the criteria considered when the animal kingdom got the big 'thumbs up' for approval that their experiences were valid and those of plants are not? Recent research would suggest that plants are suffering too.

"When a plant is wounded, its body immediately kicks into protection mode. It releases a bouquet of volatile chemicals, which in some cases have been shown to induce neighboring plants to pre-emptively step up their own chemical defenses and in other cases to lure in predators of the beasts that may be causing the damage to the plants. Inside the plant, repair systems are engaged and defenses are mounted, the molecular details of which scientists are still working out, but which involve signaling molecules coursing through the body to rally the cellular troops, even the enlisting of the genome itself, which begins churning out defense-related proteins.

Plants don’t just react to attacks, though. They stand forever at the ready. Witness the endless thorns, stinging hairs and deadly poisons with which they are armed. If all this effort doesn’t look like an organism trying to survive, then I’m not sure what would. Plants are not the inert pantries of sustenance we might wish them to be.

If a plant’s myriad efforts to keep from being eaten aren’t enough to stop you from heedlessly laying into that quinoa salad, then maybe knowing that plants can do any number of things that we typically think of as animal-like would. They move, for one thing, carrying out activities that could only be called behaving, if at a pace visible only via time-lapse photography. Not too long ago, scientists even reported evidence that plants could detect and grow differently depending on whether they were in the presence of close relatives, a level of behavioral sophistication most animals have not yet been found to show."

So why do plants get the short end of the stick here? They seem to have an awareness of whats going on. And lest you think that a diet of mushrooms would solve the problem and let you off the hook, the above article contains a link explaining how fungi are even more closely related to us than plants are. (provided evolution is correct) So I guess they are 'off the table' so to speak, also.

I don't wish to make my opponent's arguments for him, but are animals used in this argument against God because they have faces and perhaps we are more sympathetic towards them for mere sentimental reasons? Or perhaps because they have brains? The above quoted author brings up the example of Jellyfish which "can be really tasty when cut into julienne and pickled, [and] have no brains, only a simple net of nerves, arguably a less sophisticated setup than the signaling systems coordinating the lives of many plants" and asks "How do we decide how much sensitivity and what sort matters?"

Since Justin brought up this line of argument, I will assume that he has carefully thought through his position on the matter and will await for him to tell us just where the terminator line is as to whose suffering is uplifted and who the ultimate losers are to be in these scenarios.


If the amount of good in the world renders belief in an omni-evil god unreasonable, why doesn't theamount of suffering and death in the world render belief in an omni-good god unreasonable?...we are equally justified in believing that of evil in the world demonstrates that there is not a good creator god.

I don't believe that my opponent has a rudimentary understanding of one of the more basic concepts of Christianity, namely, that according to widely accepted, orthodox belief, the God of this world is not the Creator God. This is made quite clear in 2nd Corinthians 4:4 "Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God". There are various other passages that confirm this and I admit that I'm a bit puzzled that my opponent was (seemingly) unaware of this doctrine.

Premise One: Naturalism, the philosophical belief that all that exists is the natural world, is very inductively justified.

Premise Two: If naturalism is very inductively justified, we are justified in rejecting any supernatural explanations.

Premise Three: The Christian god is a supernatural explanation.

Conclusion: We are justified in rejecting belief in the Christian god.


I would like to turn this discussion back towards Christianity (or the 'Christian God'). Exactly where did Natural Law come from and was it in fact a necessary prerequisite that lead to methodological naturalism and ultimately sytematic science? Christians typically do not seek supernatural explanations except perhaps on origin of life discussions and numerous scientists seem to hold their faith concerning where the first living, reproducing organism came from with equal ardor. As one man put it, "Supernatural intervention plays no role in Natural Law, except to have set the ground rules".

EDIT: 2nd rebuttals are to be posted on our respective blogs on Thursday night.

The Curtis/Vacula Debate, Does the Christian God Exist?: Opening Statements

This debate came about through a series of emails between me and atheist Justin Vacula. In order to see Mr. Vacula's opening remarks, please visit his website at JustinVacula.com.

In our opening statements we are to limit ourselves to a maximum of five main points. I will attempt to to abide by that rule in order to streamline this discussion as much as possible and avoid plunging into any senseless rabbitholes.

For me personally, the answer to the question 'Does the Christian God exist?' would be a resounding 'yes', I believe that He does. Let me attempt to lay out what I think are five good reasons why I believe this is so. Please note that my beliefs are not limited to these five reasons, but after no small amount of consideration, I decided to use these in my arguments for the purposes of our discussion here.

#1. The fine-tuning of the earth's position in our solar system. There are numerous criteria that must be met in order for this planet to sustain life. Our moon must be positioned precisely where it is in order to slow the earth's rotation. If it were not for the moon then we would have 6 hour days and high, sustained winds[1] of approximately 500 miles an hour and thus life would be much less likely to form and survive. If our planet were to be located a mere 5% closer or further away from the sun, then the three states of water that exist (liquid, frozen and vapor) that are so necessary for life on earth would be much less likely to "prevail"[2]. Additionally, If the earth did not have the large, outer planets in our solar system protecting it, we would be bombarded much more by space debris such as meteors.[3]

These are just a few of the supposed 'coincidences' that led to habitability on this planet. A couple others that could be added are our location within a 'co-rotation radius' that is to say, between the spiraling arms of the Milky Way[4] and the earth's 23.5 degree tilt on it's axis that prevents much greater tempurature extremes in our summers and winters [5]. I believe that if one considers the mathematical odds of all of these factors lining up in an arbitrary manner, the statistical probability as such would appear to be quite remote if not practically impossible. If Mr. Vacula would like to utilize mathematics to demonstrate the likelihood of these factors all coming about randomly through undirected processes, I would invite him to do so.

This brings us to the next point I would like to bring up...

#2. The possibility that life first arose on this planet through completely random, undirected processes is so low that it constitutes an argument against such an occurance.

Or as one well known writer put it..

"There is zero evidence that abiogenesis ever took place, robustly imagined mechanisms for it notwithstanding. To claim that because there was no life before, but there is now, ergo abiogenesis occurred, is the very sort of philosophy that science has largely come to supplant." [6]

In support of the remote possibility of life occurring as such, I would like to quote this professor who offered up his thoughts on the matter...

"..the mathematical odds of assembling a living organism are so astronomical that nobody still believes that random chance accounts for the origin of life. Even if you optimized the conditions, it wouldn't work. If you took all of the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the fastest rate possible and left it for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be one chance in a 10 with 60 zeros after it." [7]

So as you can see, it would appear reasonable that one could believe that these two things had an intelligent first cause directing a desired outcome.

However, all I've done so far is raise two arguments in favor of a generic god. What makes me think that Christianity is unique here? Aren't there other religions that also have their own creation account? Out of the other competing claims out there, why is it that I believe the Christian God is responsible and the ultimate source of truth?

For me anyway, the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazereth is evidential enough. After considerable study, the scholar NT Wright has written that the resurrection and post-mortem appearances of Jesus of Nazereth are "in the same category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70".[8] In fact, according to one author, "The textual case for the historical Jesus is orders of magnitude stronger than the one for the historical Alexander the Great..There are no primary sources for Alexander and the most trustworthy of the five secondary sources was written by Arrian approximately 470 years after Alexander’s death."[9] And practically nobody doubts the historicity and accomplishments of Alexander.

You must admit, if someone suffered a very public and horrific death and then came back to life three days later, that would certainly constitute a miracle. For my other three points, I would like to offer up what I think are the best evidences for the Resurrection.

#3. The apostles were transformed. Following the crucifixion and interment of Jesus of Nazereth we read that the remaining apostles at least believed he was dead and they had little reason to believe otherwise, prior predictions by Jesus not withstanding. The apostles then became aggressive proclaimers of the Resurrection of Christ and despite facing hardships and terrible martyrdom, there is absolutely no record whatsoever of any of them ever changing their story in the least. There was nary an Oliver Cowdery or David Whitmer among them.

#4. Why do the gospel accounts record that it was women who had found the tomb empty? This is especially interesting in light of the fact that the testimony of women was not considered to be admissible in those times in the Ancient Near East. This is hardly suprising given that attitudes haven't changed that much over the millenia in this part of the world.

If the empty tomb account was simply made up, wouldn't if have made much more sense to have the apostles there at the tomb in this case and (additionally) not making them look like such doubters and failures that even Peter refused to stand up for his faith when asked about it by a young servant girl?

As an interesting aside (I really don't expect Justin to address this), this leads to another question stemming from the opposite end of Christ's earthly existance, the account that it was shepherds out in the field who were among the first people recorded to herald the birth of Jesus. Why would the writers of the gospels use them in this narrative if the testimony of shepherds was not admissible either during this period of time in the Ancient Near East?

This hardly seems like a firm foundation for "the Christian church, which is the largest institution or organization that has ever existed on the face of the earth, with membership easily passing two billion people by the end of this decade. Nothing comparable to her or even close has ever existed before. The Grand Canyon wasn't caused by an Indian dragging a stick, and the Christian Church wasn't created by a myth."[10]

In reference to the women discovering the empty tomb (along with shepherds heralding the birth of Christ), maybe there was something at work here in addition to the Son of God becoming flesh here on earth to make our relationship right with God. Perhaps as a byproduct of this happening, God wished to see the existing order of doing things shaken up and irrevocably changed.

The last point I would like to raise in support of the resurrection would be..

#5 The complete lack of any widespread, competing claims from the 1st century A.D. as to what happened to the body of Christ. If it wasn't a bodily resurrection, then what happened? There simply is no sort of 'Solly and Biff from Haifa spirited the body away on the Saturday night following the crucifixion and dumped the body in the Mediterranean. And thus Jesus of Nazereth sleeps with the fishes.' There's nothing remotely like an accepted, competing account from the time and thus applying Occam's Razor in this instance, the earliest, most widely accepted version of events would tend to be the correct one in this case.

I'll give Dr. Jerry Newcombe the last say on the topic of the empty tomb.

"Historians-secular unbelieving historians-tell us that the Christian Church began in Jerusalem in 30 A.D. [It could have been 33], the year Christ was killed and that she began because the apostles began to preach that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. You strip everything else away from their preaching, their main message was that Christ rose from the dead (e.g. Acts 2:23-24)

..many adherents to many religions can travel to the place where the founder of their religion is currently entombed and say, "Here lies the dust of our estimable founder." You cannot say that about Christ. He was not in the grave. He is risen. For 1,700 years there was virtually no contraversy that the tomb was empty. The Jews didn't deny it. The Romans didn't deny it. Nobody denied it until just recently. With our vast "rear view mirror" wisdom, we look back through more than 1900 years and we decide, "Oh, the tomb wasn't empty." Too bad those who were there couldn't have been so smart."[11] (Emphasis mine)



[1] http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=104
[2] http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Water
[3] http://people.hofstra.edu/lois_miceli/modules/SOLARS1.html
[4] http://www.reasons.org/location-location-location-research-reveals-fine-tuning-solar-systems-position
[5] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast03jul_1/
[6] Day, Vox; http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/08/lecturing-butterfly-collector.html
[7] Bradley, Walter, PhD. Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University (interview)
[8] Wright, NT; The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003
[9] Day, Vox; The Irrational Atheist pg. 116, 2007
[10] Newcombe, Jerry, DD. Sunday school notes, 10/30/11, The New Presbyterian Church, Pompano Beach, Florida
[11] Ibid

EDIT: I forgot to mention, our respective 1st rebuttals are going to be posted on Tuesday night.

On the refusal of Richard Dawkins to debate William Lane Craig, 2 responses

On the topic of atheist Richard Dawkins recently refusing to debate Christian apologist William Lane Craig, brother Gregg Metcalf who blogs over at Gospel Driven Disciples was kind enough to share his thoughts on the topic. Brother Gregg's response is as follows...

"I have been assigned to provide “your exegesis on Dr. Dawkins' characterization of Deuteronomy 20:13-15” in regards to his refusal to debate William Lane Craig.

First, Dawkins characterized Deuteronomy 20:13-15 by this statement, “You would search far to find a modern preacher willing to defend God’s commandment, in Deuteronomy 20:13-15, to kill all the men in a conquered city and to seize the women, children and livestock as plunder ... You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God.”

It appears that Dawkins characterizes this section as a command of God commit genocide. Genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” (Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 1969)

Secondly, I think that we may be starting in the wrong place. In attempting to comment or characterize actions of God we must start with the character of God. The first question that we must ask ourselves, does God have right to make such a command? The answer is yes. Why? God is absolutely sovereign. God, as both revealed in the Scripture and defined by His character or nature has the right to exercise His absolute supremacy in accordance with His divine perfections. God is infinitely elevated above the highest creature. He is the most high and is subject to no one. God is independent and does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and always as He pleases.

My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. (Isa 46:10) He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; none can stay His hand. (Dan 4:35) But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased. (Psalms 115:3)

God yields His sovereignty anyway He wishes and does not answer to any man. Job found that out when God chose to refine him through a bitter season. As Job questioned his dire circumstances and treatment God never provided him with an answer. Through a series of questions God demonstrated to Job that he did not have the qualifications or character to question God and to call God to an account of His actions.

It is obvious as one studies both Scripture and the character of God that God never exercises His absolute sovereignty apart from the other “attributes” of His nature. His sovereignty is never exercised apart from justice, mercy, love, holiness, righteousness, grace, and/or kindness. God is not arbitrary or capricious. God always acts perfectly and in unison with all of His divine attributes.

When God gave the command to the nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 20:10-15, He had every right to do so. He had the right and operated within the perfection of His nature when He killed all the inhabitants of the earth save eight souls in the ark. He had the right and acted within the perfection of His nature when He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone.

In Deuteronomy 20:10-15 God gives the command to Israel as the armies advance upon a city to call for peace, in other words to summon the city to make a peaceable surrender. If the city surrendered and submitted then the residents became servants to Israel. However, if the city refused to surrender and submit and attempted to fight against Israel then God commanded Israel to besiege the city. If God chose to allow Israel to prevail in battle then Israel was to kill the males and take the women and children captive.

As horrid as that might sound to Mr. Dawkins, this was the prerogative of a supreme and sovereign God. These actions may seem harsh and outrageous to Dawkins and to us. We are not God. We are finite and God is infinite in all of His perfections. We may not understand His acts or His ways at times. We may even pray for a different course of action or outcome, but God is sovereign and does as He pleases.

I think the text is clear and doesn’t need the judgment of Dawkins or the seemingly rewrite by Craig.

“Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples,” Craig explained.

"It is therefore completely misleading to characterize God’s command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. No one had to die in this whole affair,” he concluded.

Deuteronomy 7:1-4 states,

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly." (ESV, emphasis mine)

God is fully within divine and absolute perfection when He called for the death of these people. The penalty for sin is death. The soul that sins shall die. Death was not always “old age.” When God called for the death of these people and Israel put them to death, they were simply receiving what was due and just.

As I conclude my assignment I shall add a couple of ideas for thought. First, I know of no command, mandate, or directive that an unbelieving sinner must debate anyone. As a matter of fact I don’t even see the value of a debate. It is true that each believer is to be ready to give an answer, a defense, or an apology for what we believe, but I don’t know ifthat same mandate applies to the wicked and the lost.

Secondly, God charged Israel once with the indictment that they had erroneously and sinfully concluded that God was like them. We cannot “start” with a premise of what is fair or unfair, right or wrong, just or unjust and judge the actions of God in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. God is sovereign, full of perfection and will always act in accordance with His divine nature for His glory and our good.

Although we as God’s people today have no mandate to commit genocide against any racial, political, or cultural group, we cannot judge God or His actions as wrong, sinful, inhumane, or against our sense of justice. Otherwise, this is the height of pride and arrogance. My characterization of Dawkins reasons for refusing to debate is that he has placed Himself above God, and made Himself a judge of God and His actions and that is the epitome of pride and arrogance in a sinful, wicked, man in need of redemption."

I thank brother Gregg for his unique and well thought out analysis of this issue. My thoughts on the contraversy are as follows....

It seems that Richard Dawkins has had to stoop to feigning fake moral hand-wringing in order to avoid debating arch-apologist William Lane Craig. While I would surmize that the main reasons that he is avoiding such a debate are because, as Dr. David Berlinski has described, that Dawkins is a 'crummy philosopher' who 'lacks the rudimentary skills to meticulously assess his own arguments' and this would be laid bare publicly in a most embarrassing manner. Also that that debating WLC did not work out very well for the likes of Dr. Peter Adkins and Sam Harris.

However the fact that Dr. Dawkins has raised a poorly constructed argument to rationalize adopting the Run-and-Hide Method of Argumentation in this instance by claiming God condones 'Genocide' is monumentally stupid, even by his own lofty standards. In specific, Dawkins claims to have a problem with the instructions found in Deuteronomy 20:13-15.

"When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. " (NIV translation)

As Brother Gregg mentioned in his response, we should start from the beginning. If were to read just slightly ahead in this chapter of scripture, you would see in verse 18 that if the Israelites do not attack these peoples, then "they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods". Since the Book of Leviticus chronicles the horrific religious practices of these people ranging from all manner of sexual depravity to the human sacrifice of young children, one can see why the people of the Ancient Near East would be much better off not absorbing their practices. There is indication that such practices were starting to seep into other cultures and this did not bode well at all for the region.

One thing I would like you to consider is the very distinct option (that I heard raised by Dr. Norman Wise at a lecture recently) that a society can become so completely and utterly depraved that it can reach a point where there is no turning back.

A point in which there is no societal cure.

Nor a remedy of any kind.

Their morally reprehensible attitudes and perversions can be so thoroughly ingrained from top to bottom of a society that change is not possible and the most likely outcome would then be for their attitudes to start affecting surrounding cultures. Therapy did not exist at the time and I doubt they would have listened anyway.

Additionally, God waited for many years for these peoples to renounce their ways before extolling judgement upon them. They had every opportunity to change, and yet they refused, or as this writer describes for us...

"Thus Canaan had, as it were, a final forty-year countdown as they heard of the events in Egypt, at the crossing of the Reed Sea, and what happened to the kings who opposed Israel along the way. We know that they were aware of such events, for Rahab confessed that these same events had terrorized her city of Jericho and that she, as a result, had placed her faith in the God of the Hebrews (Josh. 2:10-14). Thus God waited for the "cup of iniquity" to fill up -- and fill up it did without any change in spite of the marvelous signs given so that the nations, along with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, "might know that he was the Lord."

I can only guess as to why Dawkins concentrates on this particular passage from Deuteronomy when, if he wanted to wail about the destruction of certain peoples, then the judgement that befell certain 'cities of the plain' would seem much more likely a candidate for criticism as entire towns were made to disappear from the face of the earth through natural disasters. However, to use an example that utilized fire and brimstone to achieve it's ends would deprive Dr Dawkins of all of the lurid and vivid imagery that the word Genocide conjures up in the mind, complete with internment camps of poor souls, wasting away and awaiting The Big Dirt Nap while the outer perimeter is patrolled by whatever equivalent the Ancient Near East had to Shutzstaffel guards. Fire and brimstone just don't cut it in this sense and would not be nearly as useful to Dr. Dawkins in committing his pet appeal to emotion fallacy.

We know that when fallible man was put in charge of carrying out God's judgement rather than a natural disaster that these people were not wiped out.

"That many of the Canaanites continued in the land even to the days of Solomon, we have the fullest proof; for we read, 2 Chronicle 8:7 "All the people of the land that were left of the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, who were left in the land, whom the children of Israel consumed not, them did Solomon make to pay tribute to this day." Thus Solomon destroyed their political existence, but did not consider himself bound by the law of God to put them to death."

Dr Dawkins, I would encourage you to examine God's written word with something other than a mind that is completely closed and through the clouded lense of poor, militant, evangelical atheist apologetics and that you embrace the faith of your youth. He is waiting for you now and would like to see all come to repentance...

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30