Posted by Jason on: 01.12.2009 /
“What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence”?
Christopher Hitchens
One reason that people have for being non-believers in God is a lack of evidence to support belief in God. This is obviously a different thing than positive evidence against something. The burden of proof, as they say, is on the claimant. Many times I have talked about evidence with theists and non-theists and always we return to the issue of faith. A theist must have faith that their god is the true one despite a lack of supporting evidence. An atheist may dismiss the theist’s claims because the evidence is weak or, at the very least, unreliable.
I would suggest that we must start from the presumption of disbelief. I do not believe in unicorns, dragons, cosmic teapots, talking animals and a whole plethora of others things not because I have evidence that they do not exist but because I have no evidence that they do. The same holds true for belief in gods of any kind. Furthermore Christians feel precisely the same way about Odin, Ra, Quetzalcoatl, Oghma and all the other gods that human beings have believed in throughout history.
There are reasonable objections to this. People accept many things as true without insisting on good evidence and even in the face of contradictory evidence sometimes. I accept that a coin toss will have exactly a 50% chance of landing heads or tails even when I’ve managed to throw ten heads in a row. Empirical evidence suggests the coin will land heads on each toss but I do not accept this because I know that this is simply a statistical abnormality.
Sometimes the evidence to prove a point is very complicated or difficult to understand. Nobody expects you to understand how to read DNA to appreciate that it contains the building blocks of living things encoded within it. Sometimes claims are not intuitive and seem to work against reason. The speed of light is fixed in a vacuum. If you were to sit at the head of a beam of light while light travelled towards you it would arrive at the speed of light and not twice the speed of light as you’d expect if you were sitting on a baseball heading towards another. This is counter intuitive but nevertheless true. Many of the “truths” of complex science are based on “evidence” that follows a convoluted chain of reasoning. The Theory of Evolution itself is not provable in the classical sense but is simply the most reasonable path that the evidence suggests. Good evidence supports it but does not provide absolute certainty. Good evidence serves to make it highly probable.
A key problem that I have with claims of theists is with the issue of authority. A scientist can demonstrate their logic through experimentation, an economist through modelling. Reliable authority is claimed by a good success record. We trust the conclusions of science because the conclusions are good in general and can be implemented in helpful ways and are supported by evidence. Scientists are good authorities who can “show their working” and freely allow others to repeat their tests and draw their own conclusions. When scientists are wrong they do change their minds. Perhaps not right away but when their position is untenable they have a mechanism in place to change tack.
Theologians are not such good authorities. No mechanism exists for changing tack. Members of the same religion disagree, sometimes violently. There is no possible way to test the assertions of one faction. The evidence for their claims are vague or missing. Sometimes these claims are logically consistent or based on intuition or popular assent but there is not evidence, good, testable, repeatable evidence, that supports the claims. Even the claims of probability that some science relies upon (abiogenesis, Big Bang theory, chaos theory) are open to refute with evidence. Probability works if it is the best you have based on the evidence but the evidence isn’t sufficient even to make God probable.
There is, of course, a counter argument to this. Perhaps the presumption of atheism is false. We can accept that unicorns, dragons and cosmic teapots don’t exist based on lack of evidence but why should this be true for God? Shouldn’t the atheist make the case that God does not exist before claiming disbelief? Isn’t the position of agnosticism intellectually more honesty? How should we go about putting a reasonable mechanism in place to test our reason in this situation?
We should apply both assumptions to an untestable idea. Space aliens or the Loch Ness Monster for example. What do we imagine that an alien or Nessie is? What constitutes an alien life form visiting our world or a prehistoric suvivor living in a near frozen in-land lake? What is our idea of these things? Then we try to find evidence that supports these ideas.
As an unbeliever it is not up to me come up with the idea of what God is and find evidence for it. It is up to the theist to define God in testable terms and present evidence to support the idea. If it were up to me I could simply define God as a great, bearded man who lives on top of the dome of the sky and then claim that he does not exist because the sky is not a solid firmament for God to walk upon. This would be unreasonable and more than a little rude. I must work with the definition provided to me and then counter the claims of evidence with new interpretations or better evidence.
The theist, in short, must provide an idea of what constitutes God and provide support for having reasons to hold to this idea. Failure to do so leaves God as an incoherent ideal, a half formed concept that could feasible fit any definition, even a changeable one, ever shifting to escape the attacks of evidence and reason. This is intolerable for an honest explorer. We must have something to work from if we are to make sense of an idea. If there is no sense to the word “God” then there can be no God.
Comment by: Stephan
1Most of your comparisons (unicorns, dragons, aliens, etc.) don’t resonate with me because I have no personal stake in their existence or non-existence. Many of them (unicorns, dragons notably) we can dismiss pretty easily because the world has been, for the most part, exhaustively explored and we have found no evidence of any such creatures. Aliens are a different matter, but I can remain agnostic because, at this point, it has no effect on me. If a loved one or friend were to start sharing alien abduction stories it might be a different matter.
That’s where I think they differ greatly from the existence of God. I have many loved ones who have claimed encounters with God in one way or another. While I do not have physical evidence that can be tested in a lab, I have testimony of many people I trust, plus my own experiences. It is true that some of this testimony is contradictory, but they all point to the same root cause, bringing me to believe that there must be something of substance to these claims. And, unlike unicorns, yetis and the Loch Ness Monster, belief or non-belief in God makes a critical difference in my life. It changes the way I live, so I have to take a side.
And once I take a side that says I believe that God exists, I need to delve into that and decide how I will live it out. For me that is following Jesus. I cannot prove that this is the right way, but I feel a need to pick something, and this is the best I can find. I’m quite certain I am wrong about a great many things, but that should not stop me from trying. It does, however, mean that I should be humble about my beliefs and respectful of others.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
2Jason wrote:
If you start with a presumption then how can you be sure that your presumption won’t cause you to dismiss potential evidence in order to preserve your presumption?
Also, disbelief may seem like a reasonable starting place to you but I can see that for someone like Stephan, whose loved ones are convinced God is real, belief may seem like a reasonable starting place.
Comment by: Chris C
3Hitchens eventually requests, in his rather rambling article, that theists provide an idea of what constitutes God and present evidence for Him. He also seems to demand that this evidence should be scientific. However, there are two types of evidence. The first is associated with science and is gleaned by experiment and observation, processes which are repeatable and therefore verifiable. The second is the type of evidence that applies more to an individuals’ accumulated experience, to historical events or legal issues, where the incidents are not repeatable. This sort of evidence relies on the records and testimony of witnesses and, unless the events are relatively recent, archaeological investigation.
As a generalisation the first sort of evidence (scientific), because it is repeatable, allows us to draw more reliable conclusions than the second. However, this does not mean that the second type of evidence is valueless. For hundreds of years our legal system, with a considerable measure of success, has relied upon it. Our history has, with some confidence, been revealed by it.
Now scripture makes clear that the Judeo-Christian God is very different from us. He is Spirit, beyond space, time and matter, all of which He created out of nothing that can be seen and which He sustains. These claims about God have been within scripture for thousands of years, before we understood much about the functioning of the material. From these ancient beliefs about Jehovah comes the logic that one would not be expected to be able to investigate the characteristics and nature of such a Creator God from within the created, in the same way that little of the full personality, features or thoughts of the designer of a car will be revealed from within or by study of the vehicle, no matter how much one examines it. Or that you would be able, just by examining a piece of coal, to get a detailed picture of the tree from which it was derived/created. So it is to be expected that the appliance of science, whilst revealing much about the created, will tell us little about the Creator. And this is exactly what we observe. Indeed, science is unable to study (experiment, observe and replicate) the properties of the Cosmos at time point zero, let alone what preceded it or led to its cause. Such findings, rather than providing evidence against God, could be argued to support the existence of a God whom scripture has argued, for thousands of years, is ‘other than us’.
If we could analyse God in this way, if, by the efforts of men, we could stand shoulder to shoulder with Him, we would rank equal with God. But it’s a truth that the lesser always struggles to comprehend the greater and can never be equal to Him. As the Judeo-Christian tradition has always deemed that God is infinitely greater than humankind, it’s simply plain logic that with our own skills we will be unable to comprehend Him. Scripture had always argued that without God’s help our thinking and reasoning are hardly up to sustaining our worldly existence, let alone the journey towards Him and certainly not the arrival at God’s door (1Corinthians1:18-31; 2:5-15; 3:18-21).
So it’s quite irrational and unreasoned for sceptics to state that God doesn’t exist because little evidence for Him can be found by scientific investigation. If the God of the Christians exists, little scientific evidence for Him is exactly what you would expect to find. All they have done is thrown doubt on the existence of a God that most theists and all Christians don’t believe in. He is life Jim, indeed life is found in Him, but not as we, without His help, can comprehend it.
As we saw in the example of the car and its designer, even in material terms, examining the created is uninformative; hearing from and meeting the designer are of major importance. How much more then, for the reasons I’ve outlined here, when it comes to the created knowing the Creator, material relating to the spiritual, hearing from and meeting with are even more vital in helping our understanding. And, of course, this is exactly what the relational God of the Christians has provided in Jesus: He has revealed Himself.
And so our knowledge of God would be almost non-existent unless He chose to let us see and meet, in short to reveal Himself. And that’s what we find at the centre of the Christian faith: a God who makes Himself known, yes a little through His creation, but primarily through events in history and through the experience of the individual. And this is precisely the type of evidence we find for the God of the Christians: testimonial evidence, both in scripture and on down the ages with the experience of Christians, the type of evidence that stands up in court and provides a basis for our history.
I can include the biblical refs for the claims about the nature of God if people want them, but there are a lot and this post is already long.
Comment by: Mike O
4You titled this post Lack of Evidence, but talked about lack of proof. Proof and evidence are not the same thing at all.
While I think we would agree that there is no scientific proof for or against God … there can’t be by definition … I have to disagree with the idea that there is no evidence.
I would say Love is evidence for God. You would disagree. I would say personality is evidence for God. You would disagree. I would say that sense of awe I’ve mentioned in the past is evidence for God. Even a basic appreciation of music and beauty. You would disagree.
Even more scientific topics, I think, bear out evidence for God. The “evolution” of two sexes when one would have been much more effecient and much less “lucky.” A working food chain and circle of life is evidence for God. The existance of both plants and animals, inherently different yet inherently coupled and ultimately complete - all with a starting material that was neither. The need to nurture anything, let alone your own offspring is, to me, evidence for God. I’m sure you would reasonably disagree.
It seems that the difference between whether something is evidence one way or the other is tied to the presuppositions you started with. I started with the presupposition that there is a God, and find ample evidence to support it, and a lack of evidence against it. You started with the presupposition that there isn’t a God, and and find ample evidence against it, and a lack of evidence supporting the existance of God. Same evidence … wildly different conclusions. Neither conclusion scientific.
Comment by: Jason
5Stephan, the lack of resonance that you feel for unicorns is the same lack of resonance that I feel for Jesus. The same largely explored world has shown no evidence for gods so I can dismiss the idea?
I would be concerned for their mental health or suspect that they were being manipulated. There are numerous reports that alien abduction stories have been falsified or that they arise from suggestions made to susceptible or vulnerable people.
I see them pointing not to a root cause of the existence of God but to the same sort of upbringing, social structure, mental apparatus, etc. If there is something to the claims of religious encounters I belief that they come from within rather than externally.
Having the courage of your convictions is certainly a laudable attribute. Acting in a way that improves the lot of yourself AND your fellow is also laudable and any motivation that helps you act in these ways is useful for you. That doesn’t make it true or the best that there is. Only the best you can find.
I’m bordering on being insulting here and I don’t mean to be. Essentially it boils down to the fact that your faith helps and supports you but it is faith and not evidence. You could say the same about homeopathy.
Helen
Good question. The scientific method is a useful tool for limiting the effects of bias in an investigation. The key point though is to remain aware that bias is a factor in any exploration and to try to account for it.
Except that starting from a position of belief is to admit that any investigation is biased as you seek only to explore those elements that support your hypothesis. Starting from a position of disbelief (perhaps I should have written lack of belief) and then looking at the evidence objectively (or as objectively as you can) is a more reasonable starting point.
Chris observed some points on the nature of evidence…
Scientists do not merely use evidence that is testable and repeatable, they also use evidence through direct observation to create an hypothesis. Then they use other evidence to see if the hypothesis stands up.
Take evolution as an example. There are no direct experiments to confirm the validity of descent with modifications or natural selection as the two “big ideas” of evolution. The fossil record does support descent with modifications and predictions made regarding the fossil record have born out in later discoveries. natural selection can be shown to be true through observation. A change in environment can cause the deaths of many types of life forms but rarely all of them. Surviving life forms could be said to have survived the cull of natural selection.
These observable or indirect forms of evidence are used by scientists and not just in the “soft” sciences. History, palaeontology, even geology all use these methods. Why should the existence of God not be subject to the same processes?
You use scripture as an example. If scripture is to be of value in an historical investigation is must be supported by non scriptural evidence. A report of an event in the bible, particularly a large event like a war or plague, should be well documented in secular records of the time. The bible does indeed have some of this type of supporting evidence but sometimes it has no supporting evidence at all.
The evidence for “Cosmos at time point zero” is not observable directly but we can observe the Doppler Effect on nearby stars to show an expansion of the universe that implies a Big Bang event. This is, of course, a matter of saying that the best explanation is supported by all the evidence and does no constitute a “proof”. You may see this as evidence for God as the prime mover of the formation of the universe but for me that question must remain open.
A statement that God does not exist is one that demands evidence. It is a positive statement of fact. What is said though is that the existence of God is not shown, that the evidence does not support the hypothesis. As such it must be put aside as a way of exploring the universe. If evidence later comes to light that there is a God then the question can always be revisited.
Not to me or to millions of others and not to a standard that stands up to scrutiny by an objective observer.
I’ve no objection to you including them for interest but they aren’t a compelling argument for me. Also my response is quite long enough.
Comment by: Jason
6Mike, sorry I was typing when you posted. I’ll return to your points later.
Comment by: Stephan
7Jason, it does not sound to me like you are coming at this objectively, although I’m not sure objectivity is entirely possible. You sound similar to a young-earth creationist looking at evidence for evolution. You dismiss or reinterpret evidence so it fits your predetermined conclusion. Try to open your mind to other possibilities.
Comment by: Mike O
8Conundrum? You are look only for external proof … er, I mean “evidence” … for something you yourself think is not external.
But you are starting from a personal position of disbelief. Otherwise you would have to acknowledge that the evidence I cited above could be evidence (not proof) of the existance of God. You discard it too readily.
I’m not saying you’re wrong - I can’t definitively say that. But I am saying you’re not starting from a true position of non-belief, which implies that you are unbiased. Disbelief seems to more accurately describe your position.
Going back to your original post
If you had used the word unbelief, you maybe would have had a point. But, to me, disbelief is just as biased as belief.
Comment by: Mike O
9I don’t think it is. It’s intellectually dishonest to claim to be unbiased on this topic.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
10Jason wrote:
What makes you think that people starting from a position of belief only explore elements that support their hypothesis? And what makes you think that people starting from a position of disbelief don’t only explore elements that support their hypothesis?
What I’m questioning is what seems to be a blanket assumption that theists are more biased in their explorations than nontheists. You can probably find individuals for whom that’s true but is it always true? Is it necessarily true? Can you be sure your own explorations are unbiased?
I’d be interested in your response to Mike’s comment: if you’ve already concluded religion is internal, then how can you be open to external evidence for it anyway? Or are you saying that’s where the external evidence has pointed you so far but you do your best to be open to evidence that goes against your current working hypothesis?
Comment by: Chris C
11Hi Jason. You said
I did say that scientists used observation. However, for very logical reasons, God, Himself, is unobservable by scientific techniques. However, it was a long post. I also said that God’s existence is subject to indirect investigation, in the same way that the historical method uses observation, the observation and examination of the record and reports of witnesses. You go on to question one source of this.
No, many ancient historical events are accepted with almost no evidence beyond the documentation and such documentary evidence is often much flimsier than that found for the Christian faith in the New Testament. Sometimes it’s only one or two records compiled many years after the event, with the only extant copies available being made 500+ years later. With the NT we have the testimonies of nine people (remember it’s not a single document, but a collection) who all agree on the essential heart of the story (quite acceptable evidence in legal/historical terms). Some of these writers, like Luke, are accepted as good historians by many non-theists. The earliest writings were made within 20years of the events and we have fragments of copies of these that were transcribed from within 100 years and onwards.
But I agree that it’s better if we don’t just have to rely on the documentary evidence. And for the events in the NT, we don’t. Archaeological research over the last 100 years has confirmed much of the social and political background that is described in the NT (though, as would be expected, when looking back 2000 years, not all of it). Further, we have the witness of the extraordinary expansion, across cultures and political boarders, of the early church (30-300AD) as a testimony to something incredible (such as described in the Gospels) having happened. (Note that this was achieved after the death of it’s leader, with a counter intuitive message of enemy loving and sacrificial care, spread initially by a small group of largely unconnected and uneducated Jews, without using political clout or military might and in the teeth of periods of intense persecution. Nothing like it has ever been seen, if you take into account all these public relations and propaganda disadvantages.) Finally, we have the testimony of millions of Christians down the ages to the fact that what is promised in scripture (a restoration to a relationship with God) actually is a revelation, something that can be experienced. You comment on this last piece of evidence, about God revealing himself, by saying that the revelation has not been
It may not stand up to your scrutiny, but to assume that among the millions that have experienced/observed such a thing that none of them is capable of being objective about it is not only wrong, but could be considered offensive.
Finally a scientific clarification.
I agree. My point was not against the Big Bang hypothesis, but that at time point zero, and before, it can’t be investigated by the tools of science: observation and experiment. So if God is the Creator (I’m not making a claim here that He is) it’s logical that He would also not be open to investigation by the appliance of science, which is of course exactly what we find. Hitchens, if he’s prepared to think a little more deeply about the nature of scientific evidence, should not be so cavalier in using its absence as evidence against God.
Comment by: Jason
12Mike wrote
Indeed not but I really did mean evidence. All the things you listed have rational, real world explanations that do not need God. You may see it as evidence but I am not compelled by it. Having said that I appreciate the point. A lack of evidence does not mean that there will never be any or that a hypothesis is necessarily wrong. It just means that we must reserve judgment until compelling evidence is available.
Actually I do think we’re looking at different evidence or at least our definitions of evidence are different.
Stephan
Actually I think that starting from a position of scepticism is the only way to be objective. In any honest enquiry we must balance scepticism and credulity. We must doubt all evidence until it can be shown to be good while being open to new ideas. Each new idea must be weighed on it’s own merits from the evidence available and not on any attachment that we have to the idea. A lack of evidence is grounds to reject an idea, always keeping in mind that new evidence may well open the idea up again to scrutiny. I don’t see that as forming a conclusion and seeking evidence to support it but of seeking a conclusion based on the best evidence that is presented.
Helen wrote
You come up with the best questions and make a very good point. A starting position that supports the idea of a creator necessitates a belief that everything supports that hypothesis. The sun rising in the morning, a butterfly landing, the smell of baking bread, the laughter of a child. All are evidence of God. The balance between credulity and scepticism is off. That isn’t to say that a theist cannot examine evidence objectively, that would be nonsense because they clearly can, it is just saying that there is no evidence that could counter the hypothesis.
Again a good question. Worded differently: what evidence would be enough to change my mind about the existence of God? Honestly, I don’t know. Something testable and truly miraculous like a limb growing back or a confirmed paraplegic regaining their movement. Having said that I do try to keep an open mind but the more I explore religion the more it supports my own views. Does this mean I am right or close minded. I think it’s the former…but then I would.
Chris C wrote
What logical reasons? Why is God not subject to the laws of physics?
You wrote about the historical evidence. Looking at it objectively what does the historical record show? That a man gathered a following and spread a controversial message of peace and then died for his efforts. This is one interpretation but there are clearly others. There is the idea that Jesus was two men whose stories have been mixed up together, the idea that he is God made flesh, the idea that he his tale is largely true with embellishments. Which should we accept? Without another source of evidence to confirm or deny an idea we are left to choose for ourselves and that boils down to faith that one reading is superior to another.
The subject is further muddled by political expediency. Constantine collected the works of the Bible and had them formed into a single book. Some texts were rejected, some raised in prominence, it is not unreasonable to wonder if some were lost altogether or others added. The controversy surrounding Deuteronomy a thousand years earlier is enough to make me wonder if some passages could have been added. I suppose I just have a suspicious mind. ;)
This is a Deist stance. That the creator set everything in motion and then stepped back to watch it all unfold. Quite rightly you say that this cannot be tested. Most religions don’t take this stance though and make claims about God’s interference and interaction with human history. Surely we can test those?
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
13Helen–you ask great questions. I rather suspect that in terms of the distribution of theists and non-theists, chances are reasonably good the the average non-theist has a higher education level than the average theist, and that there is correlationally a greater … training in and skill with the use of the scientific method and accompanying greater training in and skill with a sort of … modern skepticism.
I could be wrong. But I bet there are studies out there that show this.
I’m not saying that one is better than the other. I knew going into higher education that I would be inexorably … seduced by the skepticism of science, and I was and am kewl with that. One perhaps gains something and gives up something in that process. Maybe theists in general have a better sense of story, both local story and story-writ-large, which can require a certain suspension-of-skepticism. Maybe getting good at skepticism erodes this ability, in the distribution of people if not necessarily for every individual, so that the mean storyishness for theists is higher than the mean storyishness for non-theists. This strikes me as an interesting hypothesis, and if we could nail down operational definitions for “theist” “non-theist”, and “storyishness”, then we could test it. =)
Comment by: Jason
14Benjamin, I agree with your point on general education and scepticism but that isn’t to say that this holds true for individuals. There are highly educated scientists who are very religious and I’m sure very poorly educated atheists. Claiming that, in general, a theist is less sceptical or less educated may be true but it doesn’t follow that individual theists are unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. I’m sure neither of us intended to say that but it is worth making the distinction.
Comment by: Stephan
15Jason, I want to go back to something you said in the original post, something I often hear from atheists:
Theists, of course, are seen as the claimants, since we are stating a positive point, that there is a god.
I would assert, however, that atheists are also making a claim. You are stating that thousands of years of theology, tradition and conventional wisdom are wrong. You are saying that most people I know are basing their lives on an inaccurate assumption. By almost all counts atheists are the minority in western culture. You are claiming, essentially, that “everybody else is wrong.”
Prove it.
Comment by: Jason
16Stephan, no, I’m really not. You (the theist group) are claiming that there is a God. Atheists are saying that we don’t believe that. I am saying that the evidence is not compelling enough for me to agree with the hypothesis. That is an entirely different thing than saying that you are wrong.
It isn’t even that we’re saying that we are right and you are wrong. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc can do all that without any help from atheists. We’re just saying that we don’t agree and see no reason to go along with your beliefs.
If that means that you find thousands of years of accumulated tradition to be false then so be it. People have been wrong before. Try something else. Were the Romans right because they had centuries of sun worship before Jesus supplanted their faith? Were the Aztecs wrong about Teotl and their other gods. Were the Greeks wrong about the many gods of Olympus, their votive offerings, their temples, their traditions. These are dead religions.
Why not use a living one as an example? Is Hinduism wrong? The world’s oldest living religion has been around for about 5000 years. Are the Vedic traditions of 50 centuries all wrong? Buddhism is 500 years older than Christianity and has a similar message of peace. Are they wrong?
Religion goes back at least as far as human civilizations. Nobody knows what the first religion was. The Egyptians predate the Jews, The Mesopotamians predate them. The Chinese predate them…Animal or nature worship may well have been the first form of religion. There are still cultures today who follow nature as faith. Are they all wrong?
If so, then prove it. You cannot prove that they are all wrong but you don’t accept that they are right either. I’m simply extending that to one more religion. It just happens to be yours.
The existence or non-existence of gods or God has little to do with tradition or organised religion anyway. First comes a belief in the god and from this faith is built a religion. I have no doubt that many human made traditions are wrong but that isn’t the question that an atheist asks. The question is this: is there sufficient reason for me to believe in this god? For me there is not. I’ve looked, I’ve examined the evidence, the philosophy, the ideas, none of them are compelling. By all means expose me to new evidence, new ideas, new arguments, I can do nothing but benefit from them. It would be arrogant indeed to believe that I had seen all the evidence or considered every thought but, at the moment, there is nothing that convinces me.
Comment by: Chris C
17Jason said
I described the reasons in my previous post. The Creator of the laws of this Universe, of whom it is claimed exists beyond this Universe, does not have to be subject to the laws of this Universe (for example, look up Multiverse theory). But this is not the point, even within this Universe, at time point zero (which any Creator must be beyond) the experimental and observational methods of science can’t reveal it’s/His nature. So you would expect the appliance of science to fail to reveal the nature of any ‘God’ who was the Creator.
On the science theme you also say
I’m not taking a Deist stance. Because the nature of God can’t be investigated by science doesn’t mean that he is not involved with His creation. There are the miraculous events around God and Jesus’ ministry. Not testable by science, because they are unrepeatable, but logical none the less, for if the creator of the Universe turns up on earth you’d expect things to be a little unusual, out of the norm, beyond limits. Many of my posts talk about the interaction of God with His people in the power of His Spirit through History. As I said above, you can find the evidence (perfectly good legal and historical evidence) in the testimony of witnesses.
I’ll consider your low view of the evidence of scripture in another post.
Comment by: Chris C
18Jason said
Yes, it does show that, but looked at objectively, not only that. What you describe is a very limited summary of what’s actually written, you’re selectively picking and choosing again, not being objective at all. The record itself shows quite clearly the essence that I’ve outlined in previous posts about Jesus being an expression of God on earth and being resurrected and providing Spiritual power to His followers through a restored relationship with God. You then say there are different ideas about this. I agree, but that doesn’t change what’s written.
You then imply, I think, that people have suggested, through higher literary criticism, that what is written isn’t an accurate record of what actually happened and so we can pick any idea. The problem with this approach is that this form of criticism is now being increasingly shown to be very unreliable, in fact it’s virtually discredited. It’s methods are flawed and the results irreproducible. It’s claims of more reliable accounts existing prior to the Gospels we have, and that these were merged (your point about two Jesus’), rewritten, modified, embellished and fabricated again and again by different people (sometimes with as many as 8 different versions) to eventually give us the Gospels we have in the Bible, all in the space of 30-40 years with no manuscript evidence of any of these hypothetical editions, is just fantasy. Yes, the Gospel accounts are edited, as any three-year ministry must be, and they do give the perspectives of the writers as they recorded the testimony of witnesses (Luke1:1-4; John21:25). But there is now little evidence to indicate that they don’t give us an accurate and reliable account of the essentials of what actually happened. In fact, as I pointed out in my previous post, there is, in the archaeological findings and the early success of the Church, evidence to indicate that the accounts we have are reliable. Again I can go into much more detail with references to studies published in the last few years, but only if people wish me to do so.
But I will detail a response to one of Jason’s points.
Yes, Constantine did order a single NT book to be made, but there are plenty of reasons to suggest this contained all the earliest and most authoritive accounts. No one has ever found any other accounts contemporary with the NT documents that aren’t in the Canon. From about 100 AD onwards accounts began to appear that increasingly differ from the NT as the time separating them from Jesus’ ministry increases, e.g. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts (The Gnostic Gospels) and the Syriac texts. This material is typical of dissident literature that follows any significant movement or event (e.g. current accounts dismissing the holocaust). The only time that such later dissident literature is likely to be more accurate than the original, is when a propaganda machine, in support of an established and powerful state, wrote the first and earliest writings. This is the very antithesis of the early Church, which had no significant power for almost another 200years. Unlike the books in the Canon, these later works avoid contextual information, such as cultural, geographic and historical detail reflecting the fact that this was already known from the NT and the writers were ignorant of additional detail. The beginning of such movements are mentioned and their teaching dismissed by the later NT writings (2John:7-11; Jude:4). Further, the early Christians (Church fathers, apologists, early theologians) writing letters to each other 95-200 AD, which are not in the Canon, almost always agree with the thrust of the message in the NT Canon as we have it or quote directly from it. They rarely refer to these later ‘Gospels’ other than to dismiss them.
This strongly suggest that the Canon, more or less as we have it today, was agreed by the general consent of most of the Church by about 150 AD at the latest and that they chose the earliest records, those most likely to be accurate. The Canon, as we have it, was listed by Irenaeus circa 170 AD. There was no comment on the Canon whatsoever at Constantine’s convention at Nicea in the 4th cent and no edict to destroy any writings outside the Canon as some people have suggested.
Comment by: Chris C
19Oh and I’d like to challenge of your views on other religions in relation to the Judeo-Christian tradition, Jason, as posted in point 16 above. But enough from me already; at least for just now.
Comment by: Eliza
20Amazingly, none* of these miraculous events left any lasting mark which skeptics today can study, evaluate, & accept as “evidence”. (*Except “all of creation”, which means “all of the universe”, but all of the universe cannot violate the laws of the universe, by definition)
Yes, the interaction with his people…but not with his mountains, or his chemical elements. And the lasting evidence of such interactions are very human in form (stories, books, art). None of these lasting pieces of evidence (e.g. the Bible) convinces nonbelievers that it couldn’t have been created solely by humans, without the influence of God.
Um, but in modern times, the testimony of eyewitnesses has been repeatedly shown to be quite fallible, even immediately after a quite memorable event. Were fishermen from Galilee that much better than modern people at observing and remembering, without error, events - over many decades, no less?
Comment by: Jason
21Chris wrote:
This is true.
If something interacts with matter and energy (the real world) then it can be measured and investigated. A deist approach where a creator sets everything in motion and then sits back to watch can never be tested but a God who regularly interacts with the real world should be testable. Miracles, where the laws of the universe are suspended or altered, fall under the observation and exploration of science.
As Eliza says the evidence of eyewitnesses is subject to interpretation, is fallible and really can be wrong. This is one reason why historians try to draw upon evidence from different sources wherever possible to minimise these problems. Compound that with the issue of writing second and third hand testimony and the evidence goes from good to adequate. Poor interpretation and reporting are part of the reason that scientists don’t rely on a single experimental result. They repeat and retest to check the methodology as well as the results.
Well it was only one sentence. ;)
Not consistently I’m afraid. Where is the resurrection in Mark? Doesn’t it end with an empty tomb?
Anyway this is besides the point even though what you’ve written is very interesting. The arguments on authenticity and accuracy still leave room for doubt which makes the evidence insufficiently compelling for me to accept at face value.
Comment by: Mike O
22Insufficiently compelling evidence … OK, I can understand that. But that’s different than “lack of evidence,” which the title of this post. There is evidence … you’re just not compelled by it.
Comment by: Jason
23Apart from a semantic point I fail to see the difference between “evidence that is discarded as insufficiently compelling” and “lack of evidence that is compelling”.
Comment by: Stephan
24Jason, the different is that there IS evidence that other people find compelling. The fact that you disregard that evidence perhaps says more about you than about the nature of the evidence or the people that find it compelling.
Both you and Eliza say that unbelievers find the evidence lacking, but the fact remains that there are unbelievers that become believers every day. They surely must find the evidence compelling enough. Maybe the question that needs to be asked is what makes them different from you.
Likewise, there are believers that become unbelievers every day. What makes them different from me?
Comment by: Jason
25I’m not disputing that other people consider some things to be good evidence but that is really up to them. I do not.
I would agree but I would say that it makes me more discerning with regard to what evidence I accept.
And believers become unbelievers every day. In greater numbers if trends over the last few decades are any indication. What makes us different? No idea. Some studies have been made into brain chemistry, some into upbringing, others into formal education. As far as I know there is nothing conclusive.
That really is beside the point though. We have much more in common than we do differences. We share a common language, common biological make up, very similar cultures (at least compared to me and a Masai warrior), similar levels of education and access to information. Religion is common in every culture on Earth but the myths are not common. What is it about human beings that make us seek answers and what is it about religion that makes us seek answers there?
What I’m trying to do is explore common reasons why atheists like me don’t accept God as true. The fact that you don’t share those reasons might help you to understand what it is that I don’t see in faith that you do. It might expose you to ideas that you’d not considered. It might expose me to weaknesses in my arguments that I’d not considered. It certainly can’t hurt.
Comment by: Chris C
26Eliza said
Not amazing at all. As I reply to Jason below, miracles are one-off events; they don’t leave a lasting mark, other than the convicted person and, sometimes, a transformed life. I agree that the Universe can’t violate it’s own laws, but it’s perfectly logical that God, as the Creator, can alter them.
Some, who become believers, are convinced. However, it must be true that others do remain unconvinced or there would be no non-believers. Now, Eliza, what I find amazing is that they remain unconvinced in spite of the testimony and phenomenal growth of the early Church. They remain unconvinced in spite the Christian experiences of God, many of which, because of their quality, circumstances, lack of obvious trigger and lasting effects, defy neurological, psychological or psychiatric explanation. (i.e. are not accounted for by stimulation of the so called ‘God centre’, brain pathology, cognitive dissonance, HADD responses etc etc).
About details, yes, but not for the main event, such as the resurrection. When several witnesses agree and there are no statements to counter them, the testimonies about the essence of the event are nearly always found to be reliable.
Yes, actually they were. There’s a lot of evidence that in societies where illiteracy was common, the oral tradition of passing on historical information was perfected to do this with surprising accuracy.
Comment by: Chris C
27Jason replied
No, because by definition in a miracle (a one-off event) the laws of the Universe don’t remain suspended/altered, so the event can’t be observed or repeated by science.
See my response to Eliza here
Yes consistently. The resurrection and the promise of appearances are both in Mark (16:6-7). Scholars generally agree that the original end of Mark has been lost, hence no actual appearances are recorded.
I understand, and it’s good to see an atheist admitting that there is evidence (Mike’s point) even if you personally find it insufficiently compelling, a position I respect, because there was a time when I would have agreed with you.
Comment by: Jason
28Chris wrote
But what happens when we do find an explanation for a miracle? Mental illness used to be attributed to demons but we understand brain chemistry and the functions of the brain much better now. Isn’t this a “God of the gaps” argument? Doesn’t that make God smaller with each discovery?
If that is true we’re still left with something to explore. By what mechanism were the laws of physics suspended? Were there any side effects that can be observed? If miracles occur with any regularity can we find a statistical correlation on quality of life?
The sceptic in me says “how convenient” to that. If something in the bible has been lost then how much else was lost or excluded or edited? How trustworthy is the surviving text when even a mistranslated or missing word can change the entire meaning of a passage?
I’m not saying that it is a huge forgery by those in power, that would be rude. I’m saying that there is room for doubt.
Comment by: Chris C
29Jason wrote
Well let’s wait until we have any proven explanations for Jesus’ miracles.
I haven’t the slightest idea. If I knew that I’d be God.
As I said in my post above, all manuscript/textual criticism (comparison of ancient copies) points to it being very reliable. It’s why we know that the present end of Mark (16:9-20), which does have resurrection appearances in it, almost certainly wasn’t the original ending. But whilst the analysis of the thousands of ancient copies that we have does reveal a few discrepancies (of which this in Mark is by far the largest) and all of which are annotated in modern translations of the Bible, overall the findings show how reliably and faithfully the NT has been copied. As for translation, well I believe linguists are now very good at this from the Greek. But even if the odd word is open to different interpretive options this won’t change the overall thrust of the main teachings of the NT, which are repeated over and over again within the different books.
Comment by: Jason
30Chris wrote:
You’d need to prove they they happened first.
sorry I was just trying to highlight that we can still ask questions and seek answers even though we may not be able to directly measure a phenomena. I wasn’t expecting you to have an answer.
I’m not saying that the teachings and the writings are completely wrong, just that there is room for doubt. Just as there is room to doubt that the events described occurred in exactly the way they are described. With an eye witness account of a crime the evidence is usually considered good if it identifies the crime and describes the perpetrator. Pretty limited information. The NT describes a year (or three) of one man’s ministry. If you take something like the Sermon on the Mount as an example it is generally accepted that this was not a single sermon but the highlights from many sermons condensed and formulated to be more appealing. There isn’t anything wrong with that per se if you’re trying to spread a message (and a pretty good message it is in this case) but that doesn’t mean that it is an accurate description of May 25th 29 AD.
Or take the two creation myths from Genesis 1 and 2. One appeals to the rural shepherd in it’s use of language and message and the other appeals to urban (for the time) men in positions of authority. We don’t take the poetry and appeal to sections of society as literal truth but as metaphor and symbolism that aims to attract a wide audience. We don’t expect genesis to be accurate because that was not the writer’s intent. Do we expect Mark or Luke to be an accurate account or do we expect some poetic license?
Where that leaves me is doubting that the events described occurred in the way they are depicted and maybe not at all.
Comment by: Chris C
31Jason wrote
Just to be pedantic here, it’s no longer ‘generally’ accepted that Matthew simply gathered the sermons of Jesus we find throughout Jesus’ ministry together as a summary in His Sermon on the Mount. It’s recognised that, in a three-year ministry, like any teacher, Jesus would have repeated His teachings many times, some at length, some in shortened form, some as summaries, depending on his audience.
I certainly accept, and have said, that the Gospels are edited and abridged and that the four writers chose a particular emphasis that suited them. But that doesn’t require that the main thrust of the events or teachings were changed, corrupted or exaggerated in any way or that there original clear meaning was lost. As I said, in that rather long post above, there is no sound reliable evidence to indicate that we don’t have perfectly reliable accounts of the ministry and events in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: Immanuel, God with us.
With this in mind, even accepting the editing etc, it’s quite a step to ‘doubt that the events described occurred in the way they are depicted’ as you appear to do. It would be an illogical and blind leap of faith to think that maybe they didn’t occur at all.
Comment by: Stephan
32Of course there is room for doubt. If there were no room for doubt then faith would not be necessary. But if you disbelieve anything simply because there is room for doubt, I doubt it would leave you anything be believe in.