Heh, Kevin, I wished I knew too. Backtrack works in mysterious ways. The answer is it sometimes does, and sometimes doesn't. I guess it's like prayer ;)

Just to clarify: I don't believe God acts arbitrarily. I don't think God acts at all, as I don't believe that God exists. God acting arbitrarily is merely one of the horns of the dilemma posed by the DCTOE.

* Now, you can reject the Bible as any indication of God's nature but then you cannot use it to attack the position of those who disagree with you. *

Of course you can. You can use it to point out that those who purport to follow the Bible are hypocriticial, that the Bible is self-contradictory, that the God of the Bible is evil, and other things.

I think the Trackback worked in spite of my fumbling around!

If the Bible is hypocritical, or God doesn't exist, then that point should be debated and cleared up before the discussion continues. But that wasn't what you were saying. You seemed to be indicating, at least to me, that you took the Bible at face value in what it said about the actions and attitude of God. You can do that without believing in the Bible.

In any debate about the nature of good and evil, and God's position on it, we need a foundation. A common reference. If you don't believe in the possible existence of God anyway then we're wasting one another’s time, to a point, because there's no way for me to convince you of what God may or may not have said. It's like me trying to convince you, "My friend Joe said..." when you first need to be convinced "Joe" might exist for you to then be able to be convinced that "Joe" may have actually said something.

But this assumes that you are closed to the possibility of the existence of God, at least, as portrayed in the Bible. I have not determined one way or the other if you actually feel this way.

I suppose the question is: Can you accept the possibility that your perceptions of God, as He is portrayed in the Bible, may be incorrect? This, of course, doesn't mean you have to begin believing in the existence of that God. If you are not then no amount of debating is going to accomplish anything.

Man… I hope I’m not being to scatter brained. My head is going in 15 different directs at once. I think my point may have come out anyway. I really need to work on that.

Trackback is merely a note that someone has linked you. You send someone a trackback ping if you want to notify them that you've linked them. Movable Type tries to send one automatically but if that doesn't work you can do it manually via the trackback URL provided by the site you're linking to.

As for morality: there is a view that God is the only source of morality and that without a source outside of man to provide a source for morality, there can be no morality. Those who hold to this view hold that when we have moral impulses, that's God's doing, God pulling us in a certain direction. They usually suggest that, absent God, those urges wouldn't be there.

I'm one who more holds to the evolutionary theory of morality: that moral views evolved along with other traits in the human brain, and they evolved because they were pro-survival and, more importantly, pro-successful-reproductive in terms of a long-term strategy.

Let us be clear on this, though: if you believe in evolutionary theory as a driving force in human nature--and I do--then you have to take a pretty serious view of evolution and survival. It is not all about the survival of the individual, nor is it all about successfully bringing offspring to birth. It is about successfully bringing offspring to the point where they also produce successful offspring, ensuring the long term survival of your line.

That being the case, the urge to protect, the urge to nurture, the nurture to avoid unnecessary violence, and even the urge to self-sacrifice, are all explainable in evolutionary terms. If you give your life for your children, or your sister or brother's children, you've helped ensure that your genetic line continues.

This will tend to extend a community or tribe as well. If your community or tribe is able to produce individuals who are willing to self-sacrifice, then when you sacrifice for others in your community or tribe, your community or tribe continues, and some of the genes you carry will also carry on. And communities which can successfully produce a certain number of such individuals will have a competitive adavantage over those which do not produce such individuals.

From this perspective, habitual lying, habitual stealing, habitual behavior we consider selfish or dishonorable, may have minor pro-survival benefits to you but are clearly not pro-survival in the long run.

Thus morality is reduced to what is functional in evolutionary terms.

Theists will tend to consider this rather sterile. Non-theists such as myself, however, find this far less uncomfortable than the giant Stalinist God who arbitrarily declares what is right or wrong based on His feelings on the matter and nothing else. Such a God strikes most of us as cruel and arbitrary and rather wicked. If we were to believe in him we'd simply become matheists (i.e. people who believe God exists but is evil).

Of course, if God set all this up in the first place, then the theist can mesh his views with the non-theist, in this regard at least.

What is good or evil, according to the Bible, is not so because God says, or decrees, it to be. Evil comes to be when something strays from God's perfect nature.

... and this latter definition is used because God says, or decrees, that it will be used, so it is really the same as the first statement. Being omnipotent, God could define evil as anything He wants, but He has chosen arbitrarily to define it as "straying from My perfect nature."

Theists arguing about why athiest/agnostics have got it all wrong about why theists have got it all wrong makes my head spin. All these abstract definitions...

I'll just say that your you/me/you riff is conceptually unsound. The athiest argument is that since you consider the bible the word of god, and since the bible has some morally iffy bits in it, you either accept that god is a pretty strange guy or that the bible isn't the word of god. So citing the bible as the final word isn't something you can do without condoning some pretty nasty stuff, and still be consistant to your principles.

Me, I'm comfortable accepting that a morality is basicly a function of evolutionary biology, AND having my own set of 'self-evident truths' to guide me. I don't see it as any less consistant than using a historic document as the last word.

Doesn't seem all that weird to me Max--either you accept a view of morality that evokes a supernatural higher authority setting it up, or, you have a view of morality that doesn't involve one.

If you accept the supernatural view, then you have varying views of God. The typical Christian view (I say typical because there are 2 billion Christians in the world so there are varying views within the faith) is generally that God sets the rules, and what is immoral is that which goes away from God's will.

But that's just one theistic view. The Jewish view , just to take another example, tends to be a bit more nuanced, since they tend to accept that God can be bargained with in certain matters.

If you reject the supernatural, then you wind up with two basic philosophical schools: that morality is a consciously chosen set of rules, such as Marxists, Rousseau fans, and others tend to believe. Then there are folks like Max and I: while there may be conscious choices involved, evolution pretty well explains most of our moral instincts, with teaching and moral pondering adding nuance and reinforcing certain basic precepts. (I'm not speaking for Max, but I'm willing to bet I described his view correctly since it's how most evolutionists view these things.)

I think the Bible is pretty explicit in laying down a DCTOE. God pretty much says so in Job. Further, if the salvation by faith doctrine is correct, then that's also an explicit rendering of DCTOE.

When you see a mistake, there are two possibilities:
1) you are really seeing a mistake
2) you are failing to understand something that is correct

By looking at the Bible and pointing out apparent contradictions on the basis of one reading, you are placing yourself in the position of judging, at the very least, the accumulation of generations of wisdom; at the most, you are judging God Himself.
Don't let me stand in your way if that is what you wish to do.

A more lucid, reasonable way of looking at the Bible might be: what are the essential aspects being presented here as clear Truths? Are they correct or incorrect? For instance, do bad things happen when you lie, steal, murder, or covet? Sure, most religions have rules against lying, stealing, and murder...but few prohibit covetousness...

So once you've taken the major points into consideration, if they are 100% accurate, or even 90% accurate, doesn't that warrant further and deeper study?

After all, if athiests approached science the same way they approached religion, they'd stop believing science even more quickly: 99.99% of all scientific discoveries have been proven false...but only by more scientific inquiry based on a committed, lifelong study.
Any fool can sit back and criticize Einstein because they don't understand his theories (and several of them have been proven wrong, haven't they?). Most fools usually do.
In the same manner, any fool can sit back and criticize the Bible. Likewise, they usually do.

Because, remember, the Bible is not God. God is. The Bible is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. An improperly used tool usually harms the user. A tool that is deliberately being used improperly will never work (think about late-night infomercials trying to "prove" something you've done all your life is too difficult and complicated for mere humans to accomplish).

What kind of tool is the Bible? A tool for finding God. The Old Testament is a great little handbook for describing all the mistakes people make about God. Naturally, if you take those mistaken views as Truth, you would be forced to conclude that God doesn't exist. Naturally, you would be wrong.

But if you want to think that a cursory reading of the Bible makes you an expert, fine. If you want to assume that going to Sunday School during your childhood makes you an authority on the total sum of Christianity, be my guest. There have been an awful lot of smart, thoughtful people who have embraced Christianity and written about it. You might want to at least consider that maybe, just maybe, there's some aspect you are missing.

But that's just me.

Put it another way:
There are a million reasons to not believe in God, sure, but only one reason to believe. So it makes sense that an infinite number of intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful people reject the idea of God. Thus, the significant number of intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful people who don't reject God form a compelling argument to look closer, even if their number is a fraction of those who reject Him.

In the same manner, you know those "magic" pictures in which objects can be seen in seemingly random patterns? That's how Christianity is. Some people don't see it....it doesn't mean it's not actually true.

Alex: What the hell is a DCTOE?

Nathan: Not so fast, my friend. There was no "Bible" when most of the Bible was written. Indeed, the Bible itself makes no explicit reference to itself, and it can't, because no "Bible" existed when the various parts of it were first written. The Bible doesn't even make claim to its own infallibility--you can find a few verses here and there claiming that "scripture" is infallible, but since nothing in the Bible defines what is or isn't scripture, your very assertion that the Bible qualifies is just your assertion, and one without biblical authority.

Of cours,e that's the assumption of many other Christians. It's a belief and, by its very nature, not really testable. Although I will say that, in my experience, most who believe in the utter infallibility and inerrancy of the Christian Bible were and are not informed on the Bible's origins. Indeed, few of them even know who or what the Nicean council was, and I've yet to meet one who can tell me who was actually at that meeting.

Mind you, I'm certain there are exceptions. I only speak from my experience.

My view of the Bible is that a whole lot of Christians spend a whole lot of time twisting themselves into knots trying to "resolve" what are very obviously contradictions--and quite pointlessly. They are trying to jibe works written over a period of thousands of years by countless different people with different viewpoints and opinions and agendas. And there's no reason for it, even if you do accept that these works all speak fundamental truth.

Of course, there are Christians who quite acknowledge the problems, who will say "yes, there are contradictions, and the Bible isn't flawless." Indeed, it tends to be only a certain breed of Protestant, in my view, who's afraid to acknowledge that such problems exist. Countless other Protestants, and countless Catholics, are very unconcerned about it. "Yeah, that's unclear, yeah Paul does kinda contradict himself there doesn't he, Luke and John obviously had pretty different views didn't they?" and so on, and they don't get worked up about it.

I have lots easier times discussing theistic issues with the latter group than with folks who insist that the contradictions and flaws simply aren't there.

God’s point of view isn’t arbitrary! Why isn’t that clear?

Jerry notes, “Being omnipotent, God could define evil as anything He wants, but He has chosen arbitrarily to define it as "straying from My perfect nature."”

Yes, God is omnipotent but that doesn’t mean He can do anything He wants. It’s like saying since He’s all-powerful He should be able to blink Himself out of existence – obviously He cannot. Does that make Him less powerful? Does the fact that even He must work within limits make Him any less powerful? Not at all. Being omnipotent God should be able to force us to love Him but He cannot. Why? Because it’s outside His nature.

God has defines evil as “anything straying from My perfect nature” not because He chose to but because there isn’t another option. Black is black because it’s not white. There’s no working around that. There’s no choice behind it – it just is. The opposite of white is black. The opposite of God’s perfect nature is evil. How could it not be any clearer?

Perhaps the problem why people have difficulty seeing this point is because many of us cannot look past our own nature? We say, “I’m capable of good and evil and I can change my mind on a whim so, it follows, God must be the same way.” That’s wrong. God cannot change His mind. He cannot make arbitrary decisions. The very term “arbitrary” implies no foundation, something that can be made and unmade on a whim, without any sense of value behind the decision. God cannot do this. The Bible tells us:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Heb. 13:8

“I the Lord do not change…” Mal. 3:6a

If God indeed cannot change then making arbitrary decisions is something impossible for Him to do! What is is and could be no other way – ever. I don’t know how this point could be any clearer.

As for morality being a function of evolution and tribalism or “herd mentality” this topic has been addressed by someone far wiser than I, C.S. Lewis. I’ll paraphrase the pertinent parts about this topic here. You can read the full text in “Mere Christianity.”

He calls this moral law, the Law of Nature and explains why it’s called that like this:

“… [W]hen the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong ‘the Law of Nature’, they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitations, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law – with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it disobeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.”

He goes on to say that a body is subjected to all kinds of laws he has no choice but to obey. He can no more be dropped from a place and float in place than a stone can. But, “the law he does not share with animals,” or anything else, “is the one he can disobey if he chooses. This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and didn’t need to be taught it.”

He goes on to say, “… [T]aking the race as a whole,” excluding the rare ‘exception to the rule’, “they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to everyone… What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing…”

He then talks about morality throughout the ages, “I know that some people say the… Law of Nature or decent behaviour… is unsound, because different civilizations and… ages have had quite different moralities… There have been differences between their moralities but these have never amounted to anything like total difference.” He means that through all civilizations certain things have always been wrong. Murder, stealing, lying and such. You will not find a civilization that condoned such things to occur to its own. Yes there may be a few exceptions, like always, but generally this is sound. “Think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”

Lewis closes that chapter with, “… [H]uman beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way,” and, “… that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.”

Now, he’s established that there is indeed a common law of morality, or as he puts it ‘Law of Nature,’ and that we all knowingly break it. In the next chapter he addresses objections. The first that comes up is the herd or ‘tribal’ instinct.

“We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct – by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It just means that you feel a strong want or desire to act a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires – one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts… cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law…” is the sheet music, “… our instincts are merely the keys.

“Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not…” and instinct, “is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature’s mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses.” In short, you want to be safe but Moral Law tells you to try to help the man in danger. So, Moral Law, the Law of Nature, is something outside of tribal or herd instinct. If pure instinct were to govern us alone then concepts such as honor and heroism couldn’t exist. It’s often far easier, and healthier, to stick to self-preservation but often we do not.

“If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call ‘good,’ always in agreement with the rule of right behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage… Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another.” Moral Law tells us what instinct, or note, is right and wrong at what time.

Then comes another objection, “Isn’t what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?”

Lewis addresses it like this, “I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different… and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths.” Two times two will always equal four regardless if you’ve been taught multiplication or not. “The question is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs. There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is… that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great… and you can recognize the same law running through them all… The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for better. If no set of moral ideas were… better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring… Christian morality to Nazi morality.

“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s idea get nearer to that Right than others.”

He goes on but I’ve written way too much already. The point is clear. There is an ultimate Right and an ultimate Good that cannot be subjective. That ultimate moral standard is God.

Dean - DCTOE = Divine Command Theory of Ethics. I was just pointing out that the God of the Bible seems to imply that that's what it is.

It’s like saying since He’s all-powerful He should be able to blink Himself out of existence – obviously He cannot.

What? You must be using a different definition of the word "obvious" than I am, but to me, it is not obvious at all that God cannot choose not to exist. In fact there are some who would say that this has already happened.

Does that make Him less powerful? Does the fact that even He must work within limits make Him any less powerful? Not at all.

Well, when compared to a God that doesn't have any such limits, obviously (note correct use of "obviously") he's less powerful. If God is only omnipotent under a special definition of "omnipotent" that doesn't actually mean omnipotent, then he's not omnipotent at all. It's like being only 99% pregnant.

I’ll paraphrase the pertinent parts about this topic here. You can read the full text in "Mere Christianity."

Read it a couple years ago. Needless to say, I did not find it convincing. Lewis makes many errors in the part you quoted, but the worst (which is made by many theologians) is the idea that his moral sense is innate, and thus some sort of proof of God's existence. In fact, as anyone who has met a young child knows, children are completely amoral; they will do anything that pleases them. They must be taught the difference between right and wrong. Failure to do so results in the worst sorts of delinquency, amorality, and selfishness: this is the true human nature, the nature that we invented civilization, religion, and culture to keep at bay. This is so obvious to me that I can't imagine how Christian thinkers through the ages, including Lewis, miss it so utterly. His "moral sense" only exists because his parents passed their morality him when he was barely able to think for himself, and it only feels innate to him because he can't remember a time when he didn't have it. But that's not because it's innate, it's because his memory doesn't go back to his birth. This is only one of the many problems caused by using subjective experience to seek objective truth.

If we imagine, as Lewis suggests, a society based on a completely different morality, in which man exploits man and vice versa, it becomes clear that the reason we have the morality we do is because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here to cogitate about morality. This is the anthropic principle in disguise: the belief that because the Earth is perfectly suited to us, that it must have been made for us. I hope I don't have to point out that it is a fallacy because it could have easily been the other way around, that we are the way we are because if we weren't we wouldn't be here, and that our morality is the way it is because if it weren't we'd still be just another species of primate -- probably, like most species that have existed, extinct. The simplest explanation for the fact that human societies have certain moral precepts in common is that human societies don't work without them, and there are so many benefits to being a member of a society that people are willing to civilize themselves to gain them. No "innate moral sense" is necessary, and since it isn't necessary, and because there's precious little evidence for it, it probably doesn't exist.

Oh, I neglected to mention that it's ironic that Lewis defines "human nature" as "the [law] he can disobey if he chooses." Because that sure puts us one up on God -- we can disobey our own natures, but He can't. Don't you think this is a little presumptuous of Lewis? He's claiming to be better than God. Which, I think, is called "blasphemy." How can a Christian take him seriously after this?

Your understanding of who God is quite skewed and you're "obviously" unable, or unwilling, to look beyond that.

But perhaps you need a better understanding of the word, "unable" (since you're all about definitions). God is unable to do some things but He is still omnipotent. How is that so? Let me answer that with hypothetical. Assume you're married, like I am. You love your wife dearly, as I do mine. In my case it would be impossible for me to murder her. "Nonsense," some may say, "you need only get a knife (or whatever else) and kill her!" I'd have to disagree with them because it would be outside of my nature. While I could physically perform the act it would be impossible for me to consider, let alone commit, it. Therefore, it's impossible for me to kill my wife even though I am physically capable of doing it.

The same is with God. There are some acts God is capable of doing but, nevertheless, are impossible for Him because of His nature.

As for the "blinking out of existence" bit. I'm not talking about other gods. I'm talking of the God of the Bible alone and since the Bible is the only information we have on Him I'll go with what it says about that particular "god." Therefore, taking the Bible in mind, its still "obvious" God cannot blink Himself out of existence. I don't give a flip about other philosophical view points about the existence or non-existence of a god. You’d have to convince me, first, that the God of the Bible is false before you can even begin to address the topic of whether or not any god exists at all.

As for the rest of your post, I couldn't disagree more but I'm not going to discuss it further. It’s, again, obvious it’s going nowhere.

"Don't you think this is a little presumptuous of Lewis? He's claiming to be better than God."

I'm sure Mr. Lewis couldn't disagree with you more, as can’t I, and I think you're the one being presumptuous. Unless, you think it's a virtue that man can visit horrible acts upon his fellow man? That he can, and often does, betray, lie, steal, disappoint and a whole slew of other things to his fellow man. Remind me never to start a business with you!

As I noted in my main article, should you have read it you could not have missed this part, the entire Judeo-Christian faith is built upon the concept of God's unchanging nature. It's an awesome thing we can know He will never lie, He will always be faithful even when we are not, and that He will always be dependable. It’s God’s ultimate trustworthiness and dependability that is one, and not the greatest, reasons He’s worthy or worship.

Unless you find these things undesirable. Do you?

I think Jerry may be a bit too flip about Lewis. I think Lewis' view was probably more nuanced, more along the lies of God WOULDN'T do certain things because they don't make sense, not that God CAN'T. But maybe I'm wrong.

A bigger issue I take is the outright dismissal of the notion of the innate moral sense. I think one exists, as I said above. I think a moral sense exists in the same way that abilities for mathematics, verbal communications, and so on also exist. It's stronger from birth in some than others, but in any case almost everybody has some natural ability.

I simply believe it's evolutionary. I simply think most of our instincts are family-geared. We instinctively protect family members. We instinctively know that lying to people who we need to develop trust with is a bad thing--and it's not hard to teach children this because the sense, the capacity, is already there. Children also seem to have a sense of personal property at a very early age, although what you have to instill in them beyond that is that it's wrong to take OTHER people's property. (I.E. a child feels violated if you take his stuff from him, but it takes effort to teach him not to take OTHER people's property.)

I would argue that you can tell how advanced a culture is by how far it's managed to extend our natural instincts for morality. For example, a primitive culture only holds that it's wrong to lie to immediate family members. A more advanced culture might hold that it's wrong to lie to any member of your extended family. A truly advanced culture would hold that it's wrong to lie to anyone except in the most grave circumstances.

A primtive moral culture will hold that it's wrong to kill another member of your tribe but acceptable to kill anyone from outside it. An advanced moral culture will hold that it's wrong to kill anyone without the most extreme of justifications.

I sense that Jerry and I don't actually disagree here. I'm merely explaining the nuance of how I see it: I DO think there's a moral sense we get from birth. Some people have a more stunted capacity than others, and really dangerous ones are sociopathic. There is evidence that some sociopaths, including some serial killers, are identifiable from birth based on complete inability to grasp certain moral concepts in more than a vaguely intellectual way, by the way. They tend to view people as objects, and seem to have that feeling from a very early age.

But I disagree with the theists in that I don't think you need a divine force, a divine imperative, for any of this. Unnecessary violence is counter-survival. Habitually lying to just anyone is counter-survival. And so on. Evolution can explain fundamental moral sense in the same way it can explain fundamental mathematical or verbal ability. Culture will just help determine how far it develops in the average person, and to what extent, and it will be different in some areas between cultures.

Well, Dean, you neatly sidestepped about 90% of what I said to concentrate on a shadow on the side.
I do know about the Council of Nicea. I know what the Vulgate is. I've read the synopsis of some of the gnostic gospels, and I know how and why tbey were rejected.
I also still know that you don't use a roadmap to go hiking in the mountains, you don't use a globe to plan your sailing route, and you don't try to use a dictionary like an encyclopedia. Tools have specific purposes.
If you start with the assumption that the Bible is the Word of God, then your objections about it being written over time and not being "a bible" for most of its existence melt away. If God is capable of creating us and sending His Son to redeem us, to defeat death itself, then the problem of having a book written over time is small in comparison.
Of course, that doesn't make it true.
But when reading a book on how to write, do you take every word literally? Do you throw out the book because there is an apparent contradiction? Can you explain to me exactly why we've been able to shoot some sub-atomic particles down a tube faster than light in apparent contradiction to Einstein's theories? Has anyone seen a Gluon?

Part of the problem is that when some people try to use language to discuss God, they are just manipulating symbols. "Is God so powerful he can make a rock he can't lift?" and variations on that theme are apparent contradictions based on words, not reality. Bandy semantics all you wish, but at some point you have to remember the symbol is not the thing.

Another irony: An atheist claims to know/understand evolution better than me because he believes in it and I don't...and yet the same atheist claims to understand Christianity better than me because I believe in it and he doesn't. It would be amusing if it weren't sad.

The important speech of Good Will Hunting really applies to Christianity, as well: you can read all about it, you can quote all the facts, you can know it inside and out....but there are other ways of knowing that transcend discussion and words. Until you have faith, you will be a person blind from birth discussing color.

But again, none of this is proof. I can't make you see the shape in the painting, but I see it there all the same. It's just that it is a leap of faith, a trust. You can fall away, I know: I have. But I took the leap again, because nothing else explained the world and peace within it as well as Christianity...to me.
I can't open my heart and hand it to you, I can only describe how I feel. Few, if any, can ever be discussed into Christianity, it can only happen in your own heart.

Peace be unto you.

The other problem with using Evolution as an argument is that it is used both as source and result:
If we see it, and it is universal, it must be due to evolution.
It also could be due to God giving it to us. But we tend to look to answers to what we trust.
I drove home in my car, looking at the trees. It seems inconceivable to me that I share a common ancestor with the trees, yet evolution insists it must be so. And yet the instinct for survival manifests itself in so many ways: the higher the order of the being, the more it turns to immortality through offspring. By the definition of evolution, there must be a unicellular animal that has never died...there are trees that have lived for thousands of years...but when we die, we are dead, and can only hope that a part of us, with its own unique genetic material and mind, lives long enough to produce more offspring. Attributing these 3 results to evolution seems a major stretch to me....
And there are other problems with evolution...like the "Irreducible Complexity" problem, as I'm told it is called.
But if we apply the same restrictions to evolution that atheists do to Christianity: that it must be immediately, easily grasped without any contradictions anywhere...well, we'd have to abandon evolution as a theory, wouldn't we? And yet atheists can place their faith in that...

We all have faith. It's just that what we choose to place our faith in varies, and we all have differing theories toward which we are willing to suspend disbelief while awaiting further enlightenment.

Nathan -

"We all have faith."

No, we don't. If by faith you mean "belief without reason or evidence" then I don't have faith. Period. I don't believe in God because there is no satisfactory evidence of his existence--more than that, the word "God" itself is ill-defined and I've never seen a consensus definition.

there are other ways of knowing that transcend discussion and words

There are the evidence of our senses, and logic. Other than that, no. If you can't say how you know something, you don't know it at all.

Jerry,

The Bible is very open to the senses and logic. Indeed God gave us reason and while you will not find God with reason alone it will get you a ways.

We act on faith every day in ways no one takes times to notice. How do you KNOW the sun will rise in the morning? The pattern established from past events? Then are you saying all patterns continue indefinitely? But then, you can reason that the sun will actually rise and probably be right. However, it's impossible to actually know 100% - faith gets you the rest of the way.

That's how the Bible works. Reason can get you close to God but its only faith that completes the journey. Unless you're willing to be humble, admit you don't and never can, have all the answers, God will elude you. The Bible will confound you. It’s supposed to.

The Bible is believable but not to those who put more stock in themselves than in God. It's believable... but it's not an easy belief and it's not supposed to be. All but one of the Apostles was martyred for their belief - for their faith. Why should any Christian assume their fate should be different? We teach a difficult and hated message. We're met with hostility because the message threatens to destroy all that fallen man has come to covet. It mocks all the fallacies of the civilized man. It exalts fools over the self-enlightened.

Yeah, I don't expect everyone to believe. In fact, I expect next to no one to believe.

Nathan, shoot me an e-mail sometime. I'd love to talk with you more.

But, I think I'm going to remove myself from this conversation now. I've said my piece and I can say no more. Been fun.

The only thing I've seen proven here is that someone who believes in God is hobbled in any moral argument with someone who does not believe in God. As a believer, the author has already made it clear that morality cannot exist without God; yet tries to sneak around the logical conclusion of that if-then relationship by stating that all of us -- believers and non-believers alike -- are sinners who fall short of God's moral requirements, thereby completely ignoring the very real and practical perspective that there may be no God at all, that that we behave morally not because it is commanded, but because it works.

To the non-believer, arguing God as the source of morality is nonsensical. We don't believe in God, and for us, morality has nothing to do with God. Murder is bad because it deprives people of their lives; and because individual human beings have a strong motivation to survive, societies tend to succeed that at least regulate how and when murder can occur, so that the greatest number can live, prosper, and reproduce. Same thing with theft: property rights help societies survive by creating safety and stability. Same thing with respecting one's elders and societal stability.

There are reasons for any number of moral conventions that don't involve God in the least.

My mother -- a longtime atheist -- never tires of telling me a story where a coworker learned she was an atheist and said, "But Mary, you *can't* be an atheist: You're such nice person!"

If your premise is the existence of God and the primacy of God's moral decrees, you cannot meaningfully debate morality with an atheist. For the believer, God is the source, adherence to God's law is the goal, and a relatively peaceful and harmonious society is a nice side-effect. For the non-believer, the desire for safety and security is the source, cooperative organization is the goal, and "feeling" moral is a nice side-effect. Each side would necessarily view the other as "reverse-engineering" morality.

"Not so fast, my friend. There was no "Bible" when most of the Bible was written. Indeed, the Bible itself makes no explicit reference to itself, and it can't, because no "Bible" existed when the various parts of it were first written."

Well, It is a fact of history that in the time of Christ the Jews were in possession of sacred books, which differed widely from one another in subject, style, origin and scope, and it is also a fact that they regarded all such writings as invested with a character which distinguished them from all other books. And Jesus attested to and made reference to those writings. Later, after his death his followers further continued such writings (New Testament). So the great rabbi's of old, the great teachers of old had an oral tradition which later was written down on scrolls and parchments as did the followers of the primary subject in the New Testament.

So one fails to see, “"because no "Bible" existed when the various parts of it were first written." how that sentence makes any sense any more than any book can begin with chapter five without four prior chapters. And are the first four chapters of no meaning if the rest isn’t completed ?

Damn, I thought I was going to go but John made a good point. It's hard for believers to argue morality only with God to non-believers. I agree. So, the premise should go, assuming there may be a god, perhaps the undeniable moral code that is in every human should/could point to that god? For this moral code to exist without God putting it there makes no logical sense. I believe that is what C.S. Lewis is getting at. There's something more than enlightened tribal instinct at work here. Something is in place that shouldn't be there yet there it is. Humans are the only animal with this "defect" if you will. The animal kingdom is ruled by instinct yet humans are the only animal with a third "law" in place. Moral Law.

If there is no God then it shouldn't be here. Yet here it is.

Okay... I'm really going to try to stay away. I mean it this time! Maybe...

Reductio ad absurdum ?

"“I'm one who more holds to the evolutionary theory of morality: that moral views evolved along with other traits in the human brain, and they evolved because they were pro-survival and, more importantly, pro-successful-reproductive in terms of a long-term strategy.

Let us be clear on this, though: if you believe in evolutionary theory as a driving force in human nature--and I do--then you have to take a pretty serious view of evolution and survival.

It is not all about the survival of the individual, nor is it all about successfully bringing offspring to birth. It is about successfully bringing offspring to the point where they also produce successful offspring, ensuring the long term survival of your line.

Thus morality is reduced to what is functional in evolutionary terms.” (Dean)

Isn’t there a very serious fatal flaw in this evolutionary ethics theory ?

Kevin -

You presume that humans HAVE a moral sense. I'd say that's unfounded empirically. Certainly any reading of history would tend to deny this. In the state of nature, "life is nasty, brutish and short." Not only is history filled with incredible monstrousness, but we encounter short-sightedness and minor cruelty in our everyday lives. In fact, I think that there's a much stronger argument that human beings do not have a moral sense at all.

Nathan: I'm a fallen-away lamb. Apostate. I understand Christian thinking just fine, and indeed I often irritate people who criticize Christianity by correcting their mistaken notions about it. I happen to respect Christianity and acknowledge it as one of the primary sources for most of our liberal Western values. I think it gets a lot of kicking around that it doesn't deserve.

That said? I do not believe in God the father almighty, or in Jesus being the Christ or God's only son, nor that he is anyone's lord. I do not believe he descended into hell, I do not believe that he rose from the dead on the third or any other day, and I do not believe he sits on the right hand of any God, nor that he will come to judge the living or the dead.

I am, thus, not a Christian. I am apostate. I don't believe in astrology, numerology, ESP, telepathy, psychokinesis, or visits from aliens, either. Sorry, but I just don't. You do. I respect that. I just think you're wrong. I feel the exact same way about my friends who believe in astrology and ESP. I don't think they're stupid. I think they're wrong.

But I believe I understand Christianity quite well. Not only am I a former member of the faith, but I spent an enormous amount of time in my life studying it and other faiths, looking for answers.

I even spent some time being overtly hostile to Christianity. I'm over it now. I think it's wrong, just like the phlogiston chemists of the middle ages--very clever, very interesting, and simply wrong.

It's just what I think. I may be wrong.

Catch 22: As you noted, various Rabbis and Christians debated and accepted and rejected (and, in some cases, redacted) various holy works until a consensus was arrived at. But you're asking me to take on faith that those men who made the final determinations all made the correct and inerrant choices for all time.

I on the other hand believe these were merely political and philosophical choices based on what was best understood at the time--and that even those doing the compiling often recognized that there were apparent contradictions, and just lived with them.

Nor do I see any reason to even think that the people at the Council of Nicea really thought that every word in every one of the books chosen for the New Testament were absolute and inerrant Word of God stuff. I doubt very much that most of them thought that every word of Paul's epistles were inerrant scripture, just for example. Just to pick on Paul, I don't think there's any reason to think he thought so either. I believe that's something that's been tacked on to the Christian belief sort of after the fact.

To pick another example: nothing in the Bible itself requires me to beleive that every word of the book of Acts is absolute and inspired and inerrant. Not that I've seen, anyway. The book of Revelation does make this claim for itself, but not for the other books.

In any case, I would agree that Christian and Jewish scripture has much functional wisdom. Indeed, I believe that this is why these religions have survived so long: its beliefs and its morality are fundamentally functional. But that, too, is evolutionary: one might say that the values enshrined by Shintoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and many other religions are functional enough that the religion has survived and prospered, for they've been a net benefit to the survival of the communities that adopted them.

I don't think the Buddha was divine either. But the empirical fact is that religions based on his name have spawned civilizations that are both functional and older than Christianity itself.

Indeed, this is something I've often pointed out that tends to utterly infuriate many atheists, even though I'm closer to their view of the world than others: just becauase a belief is incorret, that does not make it dysfunctional or harmful. Newtonian physics are wrong, as Einstein proved, but they were functional and a major advancement for the human species and contain much practical wisdom that is still useful for understanding how the world works in the everyday sense.

I also note the still-troubling fact that atheists have a hard time pointing to how their moral influence on civilization has been positive. Many of them spend ridiculous amounts of time pointing out to every bad thing ever done by Christians or in the name of Christianity, but then absolve themselves and their atheist worldview of having any relation to the more than one hundred million people murdered in the name of the atheist philsophy known as Marxism just in the last century.

Yes, there are some very moral and positive atheists, but where are their great contributions? Every officially atheist government system that's ever existed has turned out far more oppressive and draconian than even the worst theocracies.

Atheism does also have the slippery problem that, when you have no absolute values outside yourself, it's easier for you to rationalize behaviors that the theist might rigidly say, "No, that is wrong because God says so."

I acknowledge these problems. I am simply not uncomfortable with them, for I don't see them as more troubling than the problems raised by trying to rely on holy works as your guide to everything.

In short, I'd say religious values that have survived the test of time are a net positive for the species and a society, in my view, even if I think they're based on incorrect views about the universe.

Dean:

Well, a relatively civil thread. Expecting the usual train-wreck worst, I didn't bother peeking in until the last here, and got a pleasant surprise.

BTW, aren't you borrowing that "I do not believe in God the Father Almighty" paragraph from Arnold Harris? That's been one of Arnold's favorite rhetorical swerves lately, the long freight-train string of negative assertions, usually involving plurals and indefinite constructions (so that actually you should have written, "I do not believe in any gods, or any fathers almighty...").

There ought to be some William-S.-Burroughs-type form of cut-up or automatic writing which produces such strings of asservation almost mechanically:

"I do not put stock in any spectacles, or any testicles, or any wallets, or any watches. I do not credit any sons of atheists, daughters of atheists, debtors to atheists, virginal atheists, or agnostic cigar-sellers. There are no moonlight tours of the lower east side in flapping bedsheets atop a flatbed truck, no wrought-iron lightning rods, and no man in a white nightgown. The pedestrian hath said in his heart, there is no toyota— half a stopwatch second before the fatal crosswalk. There is no moon, no june, no spoon, no croon. There is no barber who shaves only those barbers who do not shave themselves..."

Somewhere I stumbled across an entire lengthy page more or less in this vein. Enjoy!

BTW, Dean, you're quite right, many, many Christians do not get hung up on this inerrancy schtick. I dunno, most people I know— believer or nonbeliever— don't get their knickers in a twist over it. Yeah, some, but most of 'em, not. Now if only I could figure why so many people in the blogosphere— believer or nonbeliever— do get their knickers in a twist over it.

But then again, I discovered historical criticism at age 14. Leave it to a Liberal Protestant! I mean, it sorta ruins a person's interest in playing games of tinkertoy-logic with "Bible contradictions." (Yeah, and you know what always comes next: "Historical criticism? What's that?" ;)

Eh. As you can tell, I'm packing to leave on a much-needed and much-deserved vacation. Hope my parishioners will leave me in peace this week. See you in a few.

Have fun, people. I'm on vacation, and look— my mind's already out to lunch! ;)