Kazim to Chuck Colson: Slavery and Christianity

References:

• Kazim's review of The Faith
  
• Chuck Colson's post #1
  
• Chuck Colson's post #2
  
• Chuck Colson's post #3
• Kazim's compiled responses (including this post)

I’d like to turn back to your second message, and the question of slavery. I pointed out in my earlier post that, rather than taking it as a given that Christians have always been the natural opponents of slavery, you might acknowledge that the Bible has frequently been used in the past to justify slavery. As an example I brought up the 19th century Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, who wrote a persuasive sermon supporting slavery as a Biblical institution. Your response, in a nutshell, was this:

"There are 1.9 billion Christians in the world today. You cannot judge Jesus Christ by the behavior of any one of them or any group of them, for that matter."

Well, of course you can’t. I agree: you can't judge the value of a philosophy based solely on the behavior of its adherents. But if that is the case, then certainly the reverse is also true: You can't judge Christianity positively based on the good actions of its followers. Yet you do this continually throughout The Faith: you bring up actions taken by historical Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and you present them as if they were some kind of demonstration that Christianity is a good philosophy.

Here's my problem with that. Either you can judge Christianity by its followers, or you can't. I admire Bonhoeffer for his bravery, but I don't regard his actions as a justification for Christianity in their own right. I admire Martin Luther King, Jr. for his work with civil rights, but the respect I have for Dr. King does not require me to accept his faith as correct. It is not that I oppose your pride in members of your faith who exhibited strong dedication to benefitting their fellow man. What concerns me is that your pride in these people is used in your book, as it is in many apologetic works, to implicitly claim that Christianity confers some virtue that is not present in secular individuals like me.

However, if you can judge Christianity by the actions of Bonhoeffer and King, then it is fair game to also judge it by the actions of Reverend Thornton Stringfellow. Stringfellow strongly argued that the Old Testament was explicitly pro-slavery, and having read both the Bible and the speech, I feel like his arguments do have merit. Why don’t we just make an agreement that you cannot judge Jesus Christ by the behavior of his followers, good or bad? Likewise, why not agree that a person such as Joseph Stalin does not represent any kind of coherent atheistic philosophy, and refrain from saying (as you frequently do) that this is where atheism inevitably leads? I am an atheist, and I have no more interest in setting up political prisons or Gulags than you have in owning slaves.

You also write:

"I have made the argument in the book that the Christian church has opposed slavery from the beginning. In no way did I mean to imply that there haven’t been Christians who have been disobedient to the Scripture and the teachings of the church. There have been all through history. There are millions today who claim to be followers of Christ but who do not follow Christ’s commands. All of us, even the strongest believers, are under the effects of the Fall."

While I would agree that you could not fault Christianity for a misapplication of the teachings in the Bible, we are not talking here about people who read clear injunctions against slavery and rebelled against them. We are talking precisely about what it says in the Bible that clearly supports slavery. For better or worse, Stringfellow seems to me to have been a sincere Christian who genuinely believed that he was acting in accordance with the clear commands of the Bible. The Bible said to hold slaves, and he preached that Christians should hold slaves.

"I also cannot justify the words of the Old Testament. It was a recognition by God to His covenant people of a practice that was wide-spread at that time in every culture, that His people would encounter. But it is in no way carried forward into the New Testament. My argument, remember, turns on the teachings of the Christian church and the New Testament."

Of course. I have to say I appreciate your honest recognition of some ethical failings in the teachings of the Old Testament; I think it's very forthright of you.

Yet, the Christian Bible contains both the Old and New Testaments, and Jesus says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." (Matthew 5:17-18) Throughout the New Testament, Jesus never explicitly says that slavery is forbidden; on the contrary, he gives further instructions on how to treat one's slaves rather than taking the opportunity to abolish this practice.

On page 178 of The Faith, you do cite a verse on where Paul of Tarsus says "there is neither slave nor free" (Galatians 3:28) as an example of the New Testament's opposition to slavery. I don't see this as a very strong condemnation, however, considering that the same passage also says that there is neither male nor female. That would have interesting implications for our definition of marriage, don't you think? ;) I find it hard to believe that Paul was literally saying there are no genders; only that a person's identity in life ultimately doesn't matter. That isn't much of a case to free your slaves, any more than it is a case to get a sex change.

You also mentioned 1 Timothy 1:10 as condemning slave traders. It’s hard to be sure that this is what is meant by the context. The King James Version of the Bible says "menstealers," which is somewhat ambiguous. The New American Standard and several other versions simply say "kidnappers." Since many of the Old Testament passages regarding slavery indicate that slaves were either sold by their parents or captured as prisoners of war, this also doesn’t seem to work as a blanket condemnation of the practice.

It certainly is not my intent to argue over what is the correct Biblical interpretation. Clearly you have a more vested interest in that than I do; to me, the Bible is just a book with some good things, some bad things, and some ambiguous things in it. My point here isn't that the pro-slavery interpretation is right or not; it's just that the Bible on its own really can't, and hasn't been, the final arbiter of moral truth. Reading the Bible, it’s clear that reasonable people can disagree, and their interpretation of which meaning is best will likely be colored by their social background. I have no doubt that before the civil war, a relatively large number of people believed the Bible to be pro-slavery, while today relatively few do.

What this says to me is that morality has an undeniable cultural component, and this worldly influence can be a force for positive as well as negative. I don't think you're comfortable with this claim, but I think the whole slavery issue should make it fairly clear that this is true even if the Bible is treated as one possible source of moral values. I would venture to say that we as a society and as a culture are better off now, in terms of quality of life, than we would have been if we had stuck to the old Biblical traditions -- both those that turned a blind eye to slavery, and those that explicitly endorsed it.

Open thread on today's show

I'm actually typing this with about 15 minutes left to go in the program. But we've already had the epic 48-minute sequel discussion with Matt Slick, and I'm sure people will have a lot of feedback.

Generally speaking, I think Slick really got his deer-in-the-headlights thing on when Matt D. pointed out the distinction — which Slick pointedly refused to recognize, whether he really didn't or was just pretending not to in order to defend his position — between logical absolutes as essential properties of reality, and the discipline of logic which we as thinking beings use to understand reality. In an uninhabited universe with no minds, a rock is still a rock and not a mushroom. Slick insisted this could not be the case, conflating the logical process by which we understand "A=A" with the physical object "A," the rock. Then, in order to take control of a discussion that was getting away from him, he got Matt D. bogged down by demanding that Matt D. define a "third option" beyond "physical" and "conceptual". I think Matt D. slipped up a little here, in that he let himself get flustered and angry at Slick's little Mexican Hat Dance around his salient criticism of TAG, as well as by Slick's aggressive subject-changing and obfuscation. I wish Matt D. had just asked, "So is God conceptual?"

On the whole, though, Matt D. mopped the floor with Slick, because Slick's only response to Matt's pointing out the contradiction in claiming absolutes to be both conceptual and not contingent on minds was to say, basically, "Nuh-uh." Slick's exercise in distracting and flustering Matt was quite intentional. Having done this for years, I recognize the argumentation tactic of "if you can't beat 'em, piss 'em off" that apologists employ as a matter of course.

But did you catch the part where Slick essentially admitted God could not be omnipotent, because God could not do anything to defy a logical absolute? Which Matt D. then pointed out proved that God had to be contingent upon logical absolutes and not the author of them? To which Slick again responded with "Nuh-uh"? Based on today's call, it seems clear to me that all Slick is doing with TAG is trying to find a way to call logic "God."

Great episode, though. Discuss amongst yourselves.

They do homophobia bigger in Utah!

If you haven't seen this delirious anti-gay ad that recently ran in the Salt Lake City paper, placed by AmericaForever.com, one of those patriotism-is-the-last-refuge-of-scoundrels Christian hate groups, you haven't lived. I don't know what's funnier here. Just basking in the raving paranoia and idiocy (seriously, people, if you really believe your own marriages will be devalued by letting gay couples marry, then your marriages aren't worth shit to begin with); trying to count the misspellings and number of fonts used; or simply having a chuckle over the we-didn't-catch-the-irony use of such words as "backdoor".

Enjoy. And, uh, think of the children.

But there's more. Here's an example of thermostupid right from their website, copied as written, without editing or corrections.

They are using intimadation to gain ground and are lying to the public, ALL THEY WANT IS MARRIAGE RIGHTS to valdite their relationship of the same-sex!!! THEY ALREADY HAVE THE RIGHT to Marry, a gay man can marry a gay woman!

Comedy frickin' gold!

Another friggin' post on the Transcendental Argument :)

I'm never prouder of the Atheist Community of Austin than when we all manage to pull together in a discussion about serious topics of philosophy and presentation strategy. Last night six of us got together in an Austin coffeehouse to discuss several issues for the show, and for the first hour we went over Matt Slick's Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) with a fine-toothed comb. I see that Martin has already outlined several conclusions of that conversation admirably, so I won't need to go over all of it. I'll defer to his well-written response.

At this point people who are interested in arguments and not a glimpse at behind-the-scenes process might want to skip down to the bold header below, where I will take up one final argument against TAG.

We have received a veritable flood of comments about the Matt Slick call: by email, on the blog (both here and here), on the Iron Chariots forum, and on my favorite hangout, the Atheist Fools board (115 posts at the time of this writing). All told, there have been several hundred comments about that episode, which I think probably makes it one of the most talked-about episodes ever.

That didn't necessarily make it a good episode, of course. The feedback has been mixed, and I've listened to all kinds of criticism that I take very seriously. Matt D called me almost as soon as the show was over to vent his frustrations about some aspects of the call. While most of the email and online comments have been positive, an uncomfortably high number of them have also said that Don and I handled the call "disgracefully," that we were rude and impatient, and that Matt Slick was right to call us out for interrupting him a lot. A couple even said it put them off the show permanently.

I don't dismiss these comments. We're only human. In a 1997 article from the Internet Infidels library, Michael Martin says:

"Ignorance of TAG is hardly surprising since it plays no role in the position of the most famous contemporary religious apologists and is not covered in standard texts in the philosophy of religion. In fact, I myself was unaware of it when I published a book on atheism in which I spend hundreds of pages refuting theistic arguments (Martin, 1990)."

I wouldn't say that I've never heard the TAG before, but because it's never been a common argument from our callers, I've never given it a lot much consideration at all. I've been told that I was rushing so much to find a contradiction in Slick's logic that I jumped ahead to parts of the argument that hadn't been made yet, allowing Slick to make us look bad by saying that he wasn't saying those things at all.

Of course, reading his argument online, it's crystal clear that he damn well was going to say many of those things, but apparently wild indignation at not being allowed to talk is Mr. Slick's style. Commenter KaylaKaze pointed us to a debate Slick had with the Rational Response Squad. He was allowed to speak uninterrupted for much longer periods of time, and yet he still complained about how he wasn't allowed to keep talking.

It's a fine line to walk. Matt D and others who gave feedback are absolutely right that I should have exhibited more patience and let him go through more of the argument without interrupting. I also regret being a little more jokey than usual, appearing to dismiss and ridicule Mr. Slick. However, give an apologist too much air time and he's liable to pull a Gish Gallop, presenting a long stream of misconceptions that must be gone over in great detail. So as Martin says, Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, and I've done plenty of it myself; being in the position makes it trickier to see the long view.

I received some excellent advice from Motley Fool poster jgc123, who said:

"When you are hearing a new argument, admit that it is a new one or one that you have not worked through as thoroughly as the others. Or just tell the person that you are not sure you understand their version of the argument and keep asking questions until you are really ready to respond. If necessary, pull a Larry King and let them have the stage for the full hour, after which you invite them to come back. You can't win anybody over by not listening to them."

Words to live by. Thank you, everyone, for your feedback, both good and bad.

TAG Redux

Martin already did a great job recapping the highlights of our discussion from last night, but there's just one more point I'd like to raise with regard to the specific form of TAG that Matt Slick used, and he doesn't address this one on his website. Essentially it's a reformulation of the well-known Euthyphro Dilemma, which we refer to a lot on the show.

In point 6A, the TAG argument states that "Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature," and therefore their existence is necessarily contingent on the existence of a mind (such as God's) to conceive them. For example, the law of identity, "A is A," is true only because it is held in a perfect mind. You'll notice that in point 4C, Slick says that "Logical Absolutes are not dependent on people," and the reason he gives is that people's minds are different and may contradict each other. Presumably this includes a mind contradicting itself by having different opinions at different points in time. So here's my question:

Can God change his mind?

I suspect that Slick would say that God is eternally correct and unchanging, but let's clarify that question. Suppose God said "A is not A." Would the laws of logic then change? If he says that they do, then logical absolutes are no longer so absolute; they are subject to the whims of a capricious mind, and we're back to the same problem that Slick highlighted in 4C.

However if, as I suspect, the answer is that God cannot change his mind -- if he is logically bound to uphold the unalterable truth that A is A -- then God isn't the author of logical absolutes at all. His mind is an extraneous addition to the question. With or without God's mind, things would still be equal to themselves.

Thus, as a proof for the logical necessity of God, the TAG fails.


In conclusion, please be sure to catch next week's show with Matt and Tracie. Our hosts have the benefit of a week-long conversation under their belts, and they'll be taking the topic up again. Matt has encouraged Matt Slick to call back again, and while he may not do so -- I am also in possession of a rather testy email protesting his treatment -- there will be discussion on the topic either way.

As I said in my lecture about atheist evangelism, you don't learn to play games well without exposing yourself to tough opponents and acknowledging weaknesses in your own style. The TV show has always been a learning process for all of us, and I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to learn through error as your host.

Should we send PZ a bag of these?

I wonder if they come in Fudge Stripe?

TAG, you're not it

As I've been away from the blog for way too long, I thought it'd be a prime opportunity to get back in the swing of things with my tuppence on the last AE TV show, and the whole dustup with CARM's Matt Slick over his use of TAG, the Transcendental Argument for God. I'm going to comment, not on the show — which, sue me, I still haven't seen, but which sounds to me like it was a terrific episode, due to the response it's gotten from viewers both pro and con; I judge the show's merits by how passionately it engages our audience, and not how well the hosts did or didn't do, as you always find yourself Monday-morning-quarterbacking the damn thing once it's done — but the argument as Slick presents it on CARM's site. He is known to boast that no atheist has ever been able to respond to it, which I find hard to believe, since its flaws are readily apparent.

I won't make this as epic a post as my recent two-parter replying to questions from apologists like Habermas. And it isn't going to be the ultimate in comprehensive refutations of TAG either; there's a lot more that other writers have said than I even begin to touch on here. I'll just cut to the chase: the argument essentially tries to establish that the universe operates logically, and that it could not do so if the Christian God had not set it up that way.

When discussing what he terms logical absolutes, Slick is largely correct. The three laws are accurate as far as I can determine, and he's right when he says that truth cannot be self-contradictory and so on. If there were no minds in the universe to think about these things, a rock on a barren planet would still conform to the law of identity. It would be what it is, and not be what it isn't. Slick's sound on his premises more or less, but keep in mind that what he's talking about here are logical absolutes — that is to say, unadorned, bald, ontological facts about reality — and not the formalized methods of logic as an intellectual discipline. This distinction is important, as Slick will begin sneakily conflating the two as he gets closer to his conclusion.

Where Slick starts wobbling is in 4C.

4. Logical Absolutes are transcendent

A. Logical Absolutes are not dependent on space.
1. They do not stop being true dependent on location. If we traveled a million light years in a direction, logical absolutes are still true.

B. Logical Absolutes are not dependent on time.
1. They do not stop being true dependent on time. If we traveled a billion in the future or past, logical absolutes are still true.

C. Logical Absolutes are not dependent on people. That is, they are not the product of human thinking.
1. People's minds are different. What one person considers to be absolute may not be what another considers to be absolute. People often contradict each other. Therefore, Logical Absolutes cannot be the product of human, contradictory minds.
2. If Logical Absolutes were the product of human minds, then they would cease to exist if people ceased to exist which would mean they would be dependent on human minds. But this cannot be so per the previous point.

You may have notice how carefully a card has been palmed under C. Slick states that absolutes are not dependent on people. What he should have said here, as it would have been more strictly accurate, is not "people" but "minds." For one thing, minds are what he's talking about, after all, not spleens or toenails. And in points C1 and C2, he does clarify that he's referring to minds. But why set things up by referring to human minds specifically? Because he wants to leave the backdoor open for a transcendent, supernatural mind, conveniently belonging to his God, as an explanation for logical absolutes.

Having palmed his card in 4C, Slick switches it in point 6. Watch carefully:

6. Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature

Logic is a process of the mind. Logical absolutes provide the framework for logical thought processes. Therefore, Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature.
1. If they are conceptual by nature, they are not dependent upon the physical universe for their existence.

Did you catch that? Moments ago, Slick was telling us that logical absolutes cannot be the product of minds. Then here, he switches from talking about logical absolutes to logic-the-discipline, which very much is a "process of the mind". Then in his very next sentences, he switches right back to absolutes again, declaring them "conceptual" (that is, the products of mind) right after telling us, more or less correctly, that flawed human minds cannot have anything to do with them. There's the conflation of logical absolutes with logic-the-discipline.

Slick doesn't want logical absolutes to be the product of flawed material human minds, but he wants them to be the product of someone's mind, namely God's. So he has to introduce a bit of legerdemain at the right moment in his proof to get himself to his God. Which brings us to point 7, in which Slick, having laid down a number of observations of logical absolutes in nature, proceeds to pull God out of his hat in the mother of all non sequiturs.

7. Thoughts reflect the mind

1. A person's thoughts reflect what he or she is.
2. Absolutely perfect thoughts reflect an absolutely perfect mind.
3. Since the Logical Absolutes are transcendent, absolute, are perfectly consistent, and are independent of the universe, then they reflect a transcendent, absolute, perfect, and independent mind.
4. We call this transcendent, absolute, perfect, and independent mind, God.

Sorry, Matt, but absolutely nothing in the preceding six points has supported the conclusion you reach in your seventh. You could just as meaningfully have written, "We call this transcendent, absolute, perfect, and independent mind, Gus the Magic Cosmic Hippo."

Let's get down to a few details. First off, logical absolutes. Here is where Don Baker and Slick really tussled on the show, and I think shows how Slick's conflation of concepts in logic have really muddied the waters here. Let's just take one of the three absolutes: the law of identity.

What the law of identity describes is a condition of reality that exists, independent of mind or anything else. That anywhere in the universe, whether there is life and a mind to observe it or not, an existing thing will be what it is, and it won't be what it isn't.

But in determining that such absolutes are not contingent upon minds, and furthermore, that a mind is a flawed thing that can make incorrect judgments about things, Slick is at a loss to explain them. He does not wish to consider that a fact of nature may simply be a fact of nature. So he has to jump to the conclusion that a transcendent mind must have conceived of what the flawed human mind cannot. Then, Slick just decides to call that mind God, even though there is nothing in the entire preceding argument whatsoever to lead one to conclude, logically, that such a transcendent mind must necessarily be that of the Biblical God. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. After everything Slick has constructed in a largely impressive-sounding proof, he simply gives us an upmarket, designer-label variant of "God of the Gaps".

There are other little nagging flaws you could nitpick to death, such as the faux-conclusion "Absolutely perfect thoughts reflect an absolutely perfect mind." The natural response here is to ask Slick how he, with his imperfect and flawed human mind, can consider himself in any position to recognize an absolutely perfect thought when he encounters it. And remember, when this whole argument started, logical absolutes were not the product, nor could they be, of a mind at all. Until point 6, when logic-the-discipline and logical absolutes did a brief switcheroo that allowed Slick to shoehorn in his perfect, transcendent mind. Then, the "absolutes" became "conceptual," and thus contingent upon an "absolutely perfect mind."

But there's another problem.

For the "perfect, transcendent mind" Slick proposes to exist, it must conform as well to logical absolutes like the law of identity. If God exists, he must be God. Even if he were a God who could magically change his form into a fish or talking donkey or what have you, he would still, in those situations, be God. He wouldn't be God and Not-God. He couldn't be all-powerful and possess no powers whatsoever at the same time.

So for God to exist, he must exist in a logical framework. Thus logical absolutes cannot be contingent upon God. God must be contingent upon logical absolutes. QED.

Slick purports to address a number of objections, though he doesn't really refute the objections he lists so much as ask questions about them. I'll only deal with the first two.

Logical Absolutes are the result of natural existence

1. In what sense are they the result of natural existence? How do conceptual absolutes form as a result of the existence of matter?

If you work from a primacy-of-existence metaphysics as I do, then you realize that a logical order is entailed by the nature of existence itself. Existence exists, which is not a statement that requires a proof, I shouldn't think. And to exist is to exist as something, as George H. Smith pointed out in Atheism: The Case Against God. I suppose a person could propose the existence of something that took no form whatsoever (in fact, they've done so: it's God). But then you're stuck trying to offer proofs. And yet, what's the difference between something that takes no form of any kind, and something that does not exist?

Also, notice again how slick Slick is with his language here. Once more, the logical absolutes that are not in any way a product of mind have become "conceptual" absolutes when Slick needs them to. Well, while the law of identity as it is put into words by logicians may be "conceptual," the thing the law describes is an actual, not conceptual, absolute. And actual absolutes are inherent in nature. Unless my imperfect mind is totally misrepresenting nature to me, and I'm just a brain in a vat! Blub, blub.

Logical Absolutes simply exist.

1. This is begging the question and does not provide an explanation for their existence. Simply saying they exist is not an answer.

But Matt, your whole argument here has been in aid of getting you to God, a being whom you assume simply to exist, and for whose existence, if you were asked, you would say did not require an explanation.

Since I consider existence to be a causal primary, I don't think an explanation is needed for the existence of existence. But even though I'll willingly admit I could be wrong, I think my position is at least more sound than yours, in that existence really does exist, obviously enough so that it shouldn't require proof, as your God does. And as I've explained, your God would have to adhere to logical absolutes like the law of identity himself in order to exist. So I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than TAG in future if you want to demonstrate God's existence, let alone that the universe is contingent upon him.

The Slick Transcendental Argument

On the February 15th episode of the Atheist Experience, we got a call from a “Matt Slick” from the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. Unfortunately, Matt Dillahunty had been arranging this call [edit: No he hadn't, please see comments. -Kazim] and Mr. Slick happened to call in when our Matt was not on the air. Matt has been anxious to debate Mr. Slick, so he was frustrated that he wasn’t on that week. Matt is hoping for Mr. Slick to call again next week.

After a little discussion, Mr. Slick chose to present us a version of the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God. Apparently, it’s the one for which most atheists are the least prepared to debate. Unfortunately, Russell and I took a different debate strategy with our guest and it didn’t come off as well as it might have. I took the strategy of questioning assumptions as they came across, which perhaps bogged down the discussion. Mr. Slick was frustrated he didn’t get to arrive at the latter part of his argument with his assumptions intact, which might have been the real source of his frustration. Eventually, we ran out of time and he gave the link to his version of the argument before we ended the episode.

At dinner, we had some debate about the nature of logic and I seem to have a position that is not the majority one. I’d like to explain my position and why it sabotages Mr. Slick’s argument early on.

Formal logic is a branch of discrete mathematics invented by humans. It concerns the truth or falsehood of logical propositions. The beauty of it is that it is sound, meaning that if the assumptions are correct and the operations are properly applied, the result will also be true. Another important thing to understand is that, like any tool, it’s not universally applicable. It doesn’t apply (without modification) to truth values that change over time, things that are not discrete (think clouds, water droplets, or wave-particle duality), or infinite things. As with any tool, if it’s miss-applied, you will get incorrect results. This is the point I was trying to make in the call.

Mr. Slick was trying to make the point that logic is absolute—that it is true in all times, places, and circumstances. I disagree with this statement. In his argument, for example, he refers to a “Law of identity”, “Law of non-contradiction”, and “Law of excluded middle.” Mr. Slick is trying to lay the groundwork for a Law Giver who will eventually be the author of such laws. What Mr. Slick calls the “Law of identity” is really just the definition of equality. Exactly how you define equality is effectively a human-based assumption built into the model. The “Law of non-contraction” concerns the desirability of soundness of the system, meaning that if you build on false statements, you can no longer trust the conclusion. Soundness is a human-desired property of a formal system and we would reject any system that didn’t have it (and yes, such systems exist). Finally, what he calls the “Law of excluded middle” is an axiom of formal logic. Axioms are assumptions (made by humans) that may not be applicable in all situations. The point here is that no God is involved. Mr. Slick’s argument is on shaky ground from the beginning.

Formal logic is the basis of mathematics, computer science, and other disciplines. It is astoundingly useful, when it is properly applied. Mr. Slick tries to make a rather muddy point that logic is universal and therefore transcendent. The above discussion is necessary to tease apart several possible meanings of this statement.

• It is not the case that it applies universally and we need to look no further than his own “proof” statements to see some problems:
  
  • Both conception and death are processes that last over time. There are times where it is ambiguous as to whether or not a person is dead or whether an embryo has been conceived. They are not two-valued things, such as is assumed by formal logic. Likewise, there is no such thing as a “moment of conception” as Christian propagandists would have you believe.
    
  • Living things change constantly over time, so the notion of what it means to be “the same” from one hour, year, century, has to be carefully defined before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn.
    
  • Clouds are not discrete objects. Combining two clouds yields one cloud. Does that mean that 1+1 = 1, and one of the first two clouds no longer exists? (Answer: it depends exactly on what you mean by "exist.")
    
  • Many quantum mechanical events, such as radioactive decay, are uncaused. (Too bad for the cosmological argument for the existence of a god.)
    
• It is absolutely true that formal logic is sound. That is, whenever the assumptions and methods are properly used, they yield correct results. It doesn’t matter where, when, or by whom the model is applied. In this sense, it is absolute and universal.
  
• It’s even possible that, given just how useful formal logic is, other races will have invented it independently. Nobody has any evidence for this conclusion, but I think it’s likely. We know of no other species that have independently invented/discovered it, so Mr. Slick has yet to prove it’s absolute in this sense. He is trying to hide an assumption that a god created logic inside a proof of the existence of such a god. This is a circularity that renders Mr. Slick’s argument unsound (false).
  

Mr. Slick then goes on to say that logic is the product of only minds. It is true that humans invented it, but machines can carry it out. There are computer programs called theorem provers that can perform proofs of novel propositions. A version of the famous four color problem was solved by a computer before it was solved by a human. In his proof, Mr. Slick goes asserts that somehow minds are necessary to apply logic. Mr. Slick’s god is apparently not much better than a calculator.

So even before we get to the "meat" of Mr. Slick’s argument, we find it riddled with falsehoods and muddled thinking. I’ll let Matt refute the rest of the argument on the show, should Mr. Slick call back, but essentially, the rest of the argument is a blatant attempt to steal credit from the hard work of mathematicians that Mr. Slick hasn’t taken the trouble to understand.

I find it pathetic that billions of people believe in an omniscient God, nearly all of them claim to be in direct communication with Him, yet together they can’t come up with any evidence for Him. Mr. Slick lived up to my impression of apologists—intellectually dishonest people who are happy to mislead others using logical fallacies and manipulation. The world would be a better place without these con artists.

Kazim to Chuck Colson: Prison Ministry statistics revisited

References:

• Kazim's review of The Faith
  
• Chuck Colson's post #1
  
• Chuck Colson's post #2
  
• Chuck Colson's post #3
• Kazim's compiled responses (including this post)

Now that I’ve discussed the central issue, I’d like to return to the information about your prison ministry that you discussed in your first letter.

In my first message to you I contested the success of your prison ministry, pointing out that your study considered someone to be "a graduate" only if they successfully got a job after release. This slants the data. It allows you to take credit for an achievement that which, whether or not someone took your program, would have a strong tendency to lower their recidivism rate. I argued that it is the job that predicts their success, not their participation in your program. I also pointed out that when you take the recidivism statistics altogether, the people who took your program (including the ones who did not "graduate") had an overall worse recidivism rate than the general prison population.

You replied:

"The grounds for the compilation of empirical data, established by Prison Fellowship in cooperation with the Texas Department of Corrections was that we would measure graduates, that is, those people who completed our program, as opposed to simply people who signed up for it. The reason we did that was obvious: we could not select the people coming in—we had no control over that. The state made that choice, as it did with the people in their control group. If both sides had made their own choices, then you would consider including drop-outs. But we knew the state couldn’t choose the kind of people we knew were motivated to do this."

No, of course you can't. That’s kind of the point of a randomized study. If you could cherry-pick people who were already "motivated," then you would be working with a subset of prisoners who were already inclined to get their lives straightened out, and then your sample would be even more biased.

I mean, suppose you knew how to identify the people who were motivated to turn their lives around. Once you've picked them out of the general population, no further action is needed at that point. I'll bet you could just study them and find out that this group naturally has a lower recidivism rate than those who are not so motivated.

"The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania believed that this was sound methodology. We were very clear about this from the beginning, because we use a process of self-selection. In other words, the initial curriculum was geared to a pretty intense biblical grounding, so only people who really wanted this would take part in it. Anyone who has worked in this area, like Alcoholics Anonymous, will tell you that it’s the motivation of the participant that is crucial. If the person doesn’t want to change, you can’t change him. As Christians, we believe everyone has a free will to choose or not choose to follow Christ. So we’re obviously looking for people in our programs who are at least open to that."

It’s not the soundness of the methodology that I’ve questioned here; it's your spin on the results. The study looked fine to me, and I certainly can't go back and try to reproduce the results myself. But I don't need to. On page 18, the study stated explicitly: "Simply stated, participation in the program is not related to recidivism reduction." This is actually generous, since the final results on page 19 show that the program was in fact counter-productive, once you stop filtering out "non-graduates" and just compare participants to non-participants.

Although I understand why you don't wish to count the program's effects on the people who didn't "graduate," the fact that the presence of the program had a net negative effect on recidivism is a very significant result. As I said before, you can't just define "graduation" to be a set of preconditions which, if met by prisoners who didn't take your program, would ALSO result in lower recidivism. Or you can, but if you do that then you don't get credit for prisoners who meet these definitions.

"The acid test here, however, is what has happened since that data was compiled and released in 2003. We have continued to monitor these programs across the country, and they have continued to produce between 8 and 10 percent recidivism."

Of course they did. Those are the people who already got a job. Again, I'm not questioning the conduct of the study, but your interpretation of the results.

"As for the case in Iowa, we did indeed lose it at the trial level. But the case was appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in our favor on all of the substantive questions except accepting state funds. ... on the more important question of whether the program is effective and whether it is constitutional without federal funds, the Eighth Circuit, in an opinion joined in by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, did not declare anything we’re doing to be unconstitutional. I consider that a very significant victory."

It sounds pretty hollow to me, I'm afraid. I thought we were discussing whether the program actually helps people by incorporating your teachings, not whether a court allowed you get away with continuing the program. The only reason I brought up the case at all was because you used it in your book as a way to criticize Barry Lynn for hating truth.

"As for the question you raised about whether someone could be paroled, not get a job, and therefore not be counted in our statistics, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that. I’ll ask one of our staff to look at that, but I can’t believe that’s the case. I don’t think the University of Pennsylvania would have accepted that. The researchers who did this study were enthusiastic about the results."

I'll be interested to know whether you have found anything out by now. It seems fairly clear to me from the study:

"A program graduate is someone who completes not only the in-prison phases of IFI dealing with biblical education, work, and community service (usually lasting 16 months), but also includes an aftercare phase (usually lasting 6 months) in which the participant must hold a job and have been an active church member for 3 consecutive months following release from prison." (page 5)

Sounds pretty cut and dried: if you don't have a job, then you are not a graduate.

Assuming that my interpretation is correct, another way I could think of to create a control group for your experiment is to keep track of all those prisoners who were rejected from your program, but went on to be paroled and then got a job. If you could compare that information, then you might weed out the bias. As it is, I certainly don't think you have sufficient grounds to criticize Barry Lynn for hating your program because it helps people.

Open thread on AE 2/15

Since there was no post before yesterday's show, or any post in the last several days, I'm submitting this. If you want to discuss the show with me and Don yesterday, including the final conversation with carm.org apologist Matt Slick, then have at it. Note that comment moderation is on, so it might take a while for yours to show up.

Kazim to Chuck Colson: Faith and certainty

References:

• Kazim's review of The Faith
  
• Chuck Colson's post #1
  
• Chuck Colson's post #2
  
• Chuck Colson's post #3
  
• Kazim's compiled responses (including this post)

Hello again Chuck,

Thanks again for taking the time to compose thoughtful replies to my discussion of your book. This time I'll have to echo your apology for taking so long to reply. I’ve had an extremely eventful year, and it took me a while to devote time to giving your three messages the attention that they deserved. I hope you don't mind, but I've chosen to break down my replies into a series of multiple posts, and I will be treating your posts out of sequence.

I'd like to start by discussing the position on faith that you revealed in your second and third messages. I have to say that your perspective surprised me a bit. As I had previously noted, throughout your book you chastised postmodernists for their position that there is no objective truth, only subjectivity. Yet in your recent message, you came out with an extraordinary pro-subjectivity statement:

"All thought begins with faith. All intellectual inquiry begins with certain presuppositions. These by necessity are made without evidence and have to be taken on faith. The idea that evidence is superior to faith as a root to knowledge is one of those presuppositions: it is unproven and non-provable. So it must be taken as a priori; that is, prior to experience, or in other words, on faith."

What I found particularly remarkable about this claim was that it almost perfectly echoes claims by the very same post-modernist movement that you have so often decried. Like you, post-modernists believe that reason is just another form of faith, and that there is no way to objectively determine the nature of reality outside your own mind, and the only thing that can be described as "true" is what is "true for me." I disagree with post-modernists: I believe that reality exists, and that it is independent of individual minds or beliefs. While it is by necessity investigated and interpreted by fallible humans, the nature of "knowledge" is that it must be accurate; i.e., it must conform to a reality which is not dependent on belief.

When I read your statement above, it sounded to me as if you don’t really feel the same. When you say “faith,” you appear to be implying that knowledge is a subjective matter, which may be said to be entirely dependent on the observer. If I adopt a position of faith that, for instance, Allah is God, and I will be rewarded with 72 virgins if I die as a martyr, then that belief is "true for me."

I thought I must be mistaken; this couldn’t possibly be your position. Perhaps you meant something different than I do when you use the word "faith." After all, you had claimed that St. Augustine's influence "gave Christians the liberty to use reason when interpreting their faith." (Incidentally, I find this a curious statement. Why should they even need permission to use reason?) In any case, because of this nod to "reason," I thought perhaps you were implying that faith is simply an application of justified belief; a corollary to reason.

However, reading your other statements about faith, it became clear to me that you DO in fact set the concept of faith as something separate and apart from reason. Let me highlight a few examples of other places where you applied the word:

"But if we could prove the existence of God, we wouldn’t have to have faith."

(Clearly, you are setting faith in opposition to the notion of coming up with some kind of objective demonstration of the reality of God.)

"God is that which is greater than that which we can know. It’s almost by very definition what we mean when we say God. And if we could know Him, we wouldn’t love Him. Faith is required for a relationship between the Creator and His creatures."

(In other words, by saying that if we have faith in God, we are explicitly ruling out the possibility that we can actually know God.)

When I look at your response from this perspective, what I get from your declaration of faith is the following: You think we cannot prove anything, even in a conventional sense; we cannot know anything; we cannot claim objective certainty of anything except through the subjective lens of our own fallible human minds. Therefore, we might as well just treat the things we fervently believe as "True." So tell me, how is this not the essence of post-modernism boiled down to its purest form?

What’s interesting is that when it suits your purpose, you freely use the term "faith" as a pejorative, again in the sense of "belief without evidence," as long as it can apply to those with whom you disagree. For instance, when you speak of Darwin, you say this:

"Yet on the basis of naturalistic presuppositions—a faith position—he had to make this argument, and scientists who share that faith position must also support it."

So you ridicule Darwin’s scientific conclusions as "a faith position," yet elsewhere you have repeatedly said that faith is the most important thing there is. I mean, really, it’s right there in the title of your book. This leads me to wonder: how do you, Chuck, go about distinguishing which kind of faith is worth supporting, and which kind is ridiculous?

To return to the original theme that I touched upon when I discussed your book, the main difference between your position and mine appears to be that you have chosen to take a position of unwavering certainty, and then you describe that as knowledge. But it’s a highly subjective kind of knowledge, for your central point is that knowledge begins with something that (you acknowledge) you have arbitrarily decided to believe without reason. So again, if you’re going to take that point of view, I don’t see a useful way to distinguish your faith from the faith of a Muslim, a Mormon, a Wiccan, or a Jehovah’s Witness – all of whom stand on faith-based principles with which I am sure you disagree.

I wish to turn now to your third message, in which you attempted to justify this style of faith. You say:

"I started thinking about your comment about my being so certain in my convictions that I came across as somewhat arrogant. I think you’re probably right. And the reason, I realized as I was thinking about it, is that I have spent much time over the years pondering this question rationally."

"I suddenly realized I did have a good ability to think. And ever since then I have really enjoyed the life of the mind. But I do apologize if I’ve come across as arrogant. I have nothing to be arrogant about; whatever good I have done is a gift from God."

I don't begrudge you the confidence in your own abilities. I too have spent a lot of time considering these issues, and I have a similar high opinion of myself – I’m confident that what I think is probably right because I’ve already given it a lot of thought. Both of us hold inherently subjective opinions, but we are basing them to some extent on our own past experience, which is certainly one component of reason, and hence a step in the direction of objectivity.

So if you are confident in your own mind that your position is the right one, then that’s great; enjoy your certainty. If your only goal in writing your book is to "preach to the choir," then by all means, just tell your audience that you know you are right from experience, and they’ll probably believe you.

But I was under the impression that you wrote your book at least partly in order to persuade unbelievers like myself that your position is correct. I recognize that you would like to help me get saved from the fire and damnation that you feel certain is in store for me. Unfortunately, I need to point out that merely stating "I know it is true because I am thoughtful and intelligent" doesn’t really achieve that goal. Instead, it is an obvious effort to set yourself up as an authority by fiat: "You should believe this because I believe it, and I must be right."

If I were to accept this sort of rhetorical tactic, I would be basing my beliefs on something truly subjective. Either I just agree to accept you (or somebody else) as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge, or I accept everybody’s beliefs as equally valid, even contradictory beliefs. Neither reaction strikes me as a satisfying approach to knowledge.

The long awaited reply to Chuck Colson (but not quite)

Okay, okay, okay.

Those of you who have been hanging around for a while will remember that I reviewed a free copy of Chuck Colson's The Faith many months ago; he took a couple of months to reply, and then he wrote three separate but very long posts over the next few weeks.  And you'll also remember that I keep on making half-hearted promises to post a substantial reply to those posts, but I keep on not actually doing it.

Part of the reason has been personal life stuff, and part of it is because there are just so many things to criticize, single sentences that take hours to rebut.

I'm thinking of a new approach to get me moving.  I have a long commute with a carpool and a laptop now, so I'm able to write regularly, but I'm still swamped trying to think of how to organize the mega-response I was writing.  So here's my proposal.  Since I've managed to get fired up writing so much about debate lately, I'm thinking I should make this a weekly installment.  I'll post what I have written already, and then each week maybe identify one particular aspect of Chuck's posts, write something during the week, and post something even if it's short.

The question I have for you readers is: Should I send a message to Chuck's liaison immediately after writing the first post, and keep updating him, thereby inviting more replies before I'm finished?

Or, should I do this for several weeks, and then gather up ALL the posts when I've finished having my say, and send a big list of links?

What do you say?

So who is making money during the economic crisis?

Sleazy "psychics" with their usual exploit-the-scared-and-insecure routine.

But you know, you're likely to be astonished — simply slack-jawed in astonishment — over the powerful predictions that come from "psychic" Roxanne Usleman. Prepare to have your skepticism swept into the sea:

The housing crisis will deepen, the country could fall into a depression and laid-off workers may need to start their own business.

Holy shit! How does she do it? Bog knows no real financial advisor would be able to come up with ideas like that! Must be why so many pathetic dimwits concerned, thoughtful people like Bruce Levy (who, of course, was "skeptical at first") consider Usleman someone who "is able to make me see things that I wouldn't otherwise see."

I'd suggest that if Levy is so lame a "businessman" that he cannot see that we're swirling in a financial whirlpool, that it will get worse before it gets better, and that a whole new career game plan might be worth thinking about, and see those things all on his own without paying some dingbat with a really ghastly face lift $20 a minute to tell him, then he deserves to be a broke-ass chump.

I suppose I shouldn't blame Usleman for doing whatever she can do to avert financial hard times on her own. But I have these things called morals, and, well, taking advantage of the mentally disadvantaged or emotionally vulnerable just isn't on my "cool things to do" list.

You weren't wondering, but...

Where has Rhology been trolling since we showed him the door? Well, he's currently being tiresome over at poor Abbie Smith's blog. The usual obfuscation, idiotic premises ("The consistent naturalist can't prove that he is not a brain in a vat."), goalpost shifting, hand-waving and tautologies ("Or perhaps you could prove that evidence is the best way to discover truth. I'd like some evidence for that claim." ...etc) presented as if they were bold challenges, followed by smarminess. His pattern is the same there as it was here: present a load of hopelessly inane questions and risible assertions, and when people point out how inane and risible they are, slip into smirking condescension that they're — ha ha! — avoiding answering you.

Poor ERV. Sure, her commenters are making mincemeat of the guy. But only a few of them have twigged that he's an intellectual poseur who isn't interested in answers, facts, or even genuine discussion, only in getting a rise out of atheists. And once he's done so, he does his little victory lap. Anyway, go have a look if you need a reminder of why the boy isn't welcome here any more.

Case study: William Lane Craig vs. Bart Ehrman

In my ongoing discussion about the need for experienced debaters in the atheist camp, a theist named MrFreeThinker linked to a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman, in which he asserts that Bart Ehrman was "pwned." In particular, MFT says:

Bart Ehrman made some mathematically poor claims where he equivocated between intrinsic probability and specific probability with regard to miracles. W.L. Craig was able to use Baye's theorem to show how his reasoning was mathematically fallacious. Ehrman was unable to counter Crag's claims but made some backhanded ad hominems later on saying that Craig would be laughed at if he tried to bring his calculations on miracles to any secular university. W.L. Craig then pointed out that philosophers such as Richard Swinburne (a eminent philosopher of science at Oxford University) had also made similar calculations it was a moment of sheer pwnage.

(On a side note Swinburne's calculations on the probability of Jesus' Resurrection and God's existence are available in his books "The Existence of God" and "Resurrection of God Incarnate")

After reading the debate transcript, I have to agree that Ehrman made some missteps. But I don't think they're the ones the MFT thinks they are.

Let's start with the topic being debated. Right now I'm a bit fixated on the issue that theist/atheist debates are routinely set up with fixed, bogus, and stacked resolutions. THIS debate proposed to settle the following question:

Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?

Sigh... here we go again. As I keep saying, theist debaters perpetually count on setting up debates with a loaded topic, so that the unbeliever loses before the debate has begun.

So what's wrong with this topic? Yet again, it allows the theist side to play semantic games with definitions. What qualifies as "historical evidence" for the resurrection of Jesus? I think a naive atheist would assume that this means there is "sufficient, compelling, and persuasive evidence" that establishes the resurrection of Jesus. Fine, if you have a sympathetic audience. But you don't. You never will. So here's what Craig's obviously going to do: he's going to declare that any claim by anyone that indicates Jesus was resurrected counts as "historical evidence." And he wins! Why? Because he's right!

Just like "theory," "evidence" is a word with numerous meanings depending on how it's applied. So if Craig can find one person, from any point in history, who is willing to say "Jesus was resurrected," he's got evidence. Is it good evidence? Duh, of course not. But it's evidence. By the same standard, I could easily lose a debate asking me to prove that there's no historical evidence for Galactic Overlord Xenu. And the Salem Witch Trials provided all kinds of evidence (read: other people's testimony) proving that those women were, in fact, in league with the devil.

Ahem, Bart, I believe the topic you actually meant to debate was this: "Was Jesus resurrected?" Simple. No frills. When you stepped into this loaded topic, you gave Craig a free pass to "win" just by throwing out enough stuff to allow for the vaguest possibility that Jesus was resurrected. You awarded yourself the burden of proof, requiring yourself to demonstrate conclusively that there is no evidence of any kind, good or bad.

So if nothing else, I want to thank MFT for bringing up yet another perfect illustration of my point. Now let's move on to the substance of the debate. I'm not going to go through the entire thing. For now, I just want to focus on the specific case this argument from probability that he brought up.

From where I sit, all I see is Craig doing what creationists always do. He throws up a bunch of obfuscated equations on the board, counts on his audience not knowing enough to understand what the argument is, slips in gigantic assumptions about the natural world, and declares victory.

Obfuscated equation: check.

Pr (R/ B&E) = Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/ B & R) /

[ Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/ B & R) ] + [ Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/ B & not-R) ]

What value does that equation add to the credibility of Craig's actual argument? None whatsoever. It's a time filler, and it awes a lay audience who are expected to treat monstrous equations as magical incantations.

When you strip away the filler, Craig finally gets around to framing his actual argument, which is this:

"In order to show that that hypothesis is improbable, you’d have to show that God’s existence is improbable. But Dr. Ehrman says that the historian cannot say anything about God. Therefore, he cannot say that God’s existence is improbable. But if he can’t say that, neither can he say that the resurrection of Jesus is improbable. So Dr. Ehrman’s position is literally self-refuting.

But that’s not all. Dr. Ehrman just assumes that the probability of the resurrection on our background knowledge [Pr(R/B)] is very low. But here, I think, he’s confused. What, after all, is the resurrection hypothesis? It’s the hypothesis that Jesus rose supernaturally from the dead. It is not the hypothesis that Jesus rose naturally from the dead. That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable. But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead."

That's it. It took approximately five pages and three slides to say that. Five pages of scribbled equations, smarmy insults, cute little nicknaming conventions, and a whole pile of hand-waving. To obfuscate those two simple sentences.

And when you strip the argument down to those two sentences, the argument sucks. It's basically "Jesus could rise from the dead, because God can do magic!" Hey, wait a minute, I thought that was a big part of what we were arguing about in the first place. But Craig just asserts that this is true, and doesn't support his implied belief that magical events are happening all the time. Instead of backing up this claim, he deftly covered it up in those five pages of completely tangential empty academic masturbation.

This is endemic to creationist arguments. Kirk Durston does that too. Michael Behe does it a lot. What these debates have in common is that they use tons of math as a way of befuddling the audience, lulling them into thinking "I have no idea what that guy is saying so he must be smart." Then they have a hook to bring the argument back to the audience's reality. They make a spurious connection between the hook and the math, and then "therefore God exists."

They do this all the time. It's their main tactic.

The thing about math is, it does actually mean something specific, but it's impossible to look up or pore over the details during a live debate. It's also long and it's boring, and they're counting on the audience to gloss right over the equations and assume that the hook is a correct summation of the math.

Okay, so since we know this tactic is going to come up repeatedly. How do we deal with it? I haven't settled this in my own mind, but I have some ideas. First of all, the math is guaranteed to be a smokescreen. There's a place for equations in a scientific journal, or a class full of students who are studying the topic, but if you're trying to persuade an audience of mixed education, it's a sure bet that the intention is to obfuscate rather than explain.

So blow past the math. It's important to watch like a hawk for the moment where the apologist explains what his REAL argument is, and make a snap judgment about whether this argument stands up on its own. You can't study the math or verify it during the debate, so you can assume that (1) it may well be full of lies and phony inferences, and (2) the audience will have no idea if it isn't. So above all else, do not waste time actually addressing the equations.

At any rate, atheists already have a perception problem of being overly nerdy, being concerned with "science" and "evidence" and whatnot. I think a little verbal kung fu is in order, i.e., using your opponent's strength against him. Don't just skip the math... ridicule it. That may sound kind of mean, but pay attention: William Lane Craig is kind of a dick anyway. He resorts to slides with labels like "Ehrman's Egregious Error" and "Bart's Blunder."

Hell, I think it wouldn't hurt to have a slide ready that says "Craig's Cretinous Calculations." And then, fill the page with truly irrelevant equations. Put up the freaking Pythagorean Theorem, or an expanded quadratic equation. Make a joke out of it. The audience will crack up if they realize you were prepared all along to hit Craig with his own nonsense. Odds are that they were probably feeling uncomfortable already because Craig was making them feel stupid, so it should be easy to get them laugh with you. And then, boil down his argument to its unsupported essence, and nail it.

But I digress. We were discussing how Bart Ehrman did. Well, MrFreeThinker, I'm willing to concede that he didn't do all that great. This is right in line with what I keep saying: apologists win debates because they are good at performance art. Ehrman wasn't prepared to act like a circus sideshow attraction.

But don't think that means I'm ridiculing Craig when I say "circus sideshow." That's what an apologetics debate is. Bart should have been prepared to do performance art, and if he can't win at that game then he isn't prepared to debate.

As for Richard Swinburne, I couldn't care less what he thinks. Craig pulled him up because he was name-dropping. Preceding this comment, Ehrman said this:

"I have trouble believing that we’re having a serious conversation about the statistical probability of the resurrection or the statistical probability of the existence of God. I think in any university setting in the country, if we were in front of a group of academics we would be howled off the stage."

Ehrman shouldn't have said that. You know why? Because he should have known that for any crazy belief in the world, there probably exists some crackpot academic who will support it.

So yeah, I guess I'll sort of give Craig the point for his name drop. What he proved was that the correct phrasing is:

"In any university setting in the country, if we were in front of a group of academics we would be howled off the stage... unless, of course, one of them happens to be Richard Swinburne."

Yet another loaded debate topic

Via a comment from reader Curtis Cameron:

Next week (on Darwin Day), Dan Barker will debate Kyle Butt on the specific question of the existence of the God of the Bible.

And from the linked web site:

Barker will affirm, "I know the God of the Bible does not exist"...

Okay, seriously, this is getting ridiculous.  In fact, it's rapidly becoming my number one pet peeve about theist/atheist debates.  I'm going to try to make this real simple.

Attention debaters: Stop falling for this!  Theists who challenge you to a debate are not representatives of the National Forensics League.  They are not a neutral party trying to set up an objective and fair confrontation for both sides.  They are deliberately trying to stack the deck against you.  They want you to lose the debate before you set foot in the room.

How in the world did Dan Barker fall for this?  One of the strongest tools that atheists have is attributing the burden of proof to the theist.  I don't know that unicorns do not exist.  I don't know that Russell's Teapot orbiting beyond Mars does not exist.  I simply don't have any reason to believe that they do.

By accepting this ridiculous topic, (a) Dan Barker is forced to defend a position that he probably doesn't hold; (b) he's now locked into a position where the theist can just spout vague pseudo-philosophy about knowledge and epistemology, and not defend the concept that a god exists at all.

This is important, guys.  Pay attention to the format and the topic before you agree to a debate. Tell your friends.  Don't make me keep repeating it.

Will somebody please pass this friendly advice along?  This trend must be stopped.

If I were Barker, I'd try to salvage this bad situation by making a self-deprecating joke about it.  First thing you say is, "Let me tell you right away I'm going to lose this debate.  Why?  The topic is set to a position that is not mine.  I don't 'know' that there is no God, any more than I know that there is no FSM.  So recognizing that I've already lost my case, I'm going to turn this debate into a draw by making sure my opponent loses right along with me.  He doesn't know that God exists because..." etc.

How to manage an atheist debate

I've paid very close attention to all your comments on my post about developing a debate infrastructure for atheists.  There has been a lot of positive feedback, and there were some reasonable concerns brought up as well.  Some people suggested that ACA should just start hosting debates locally, and I'm taking some steps to look into that possibility (but no promises!)

Let me address the most pressing concern right here:

Why bother?  Your opponent will never change his mind.

As I hope I've made thoroughly clear in past discussions on this subject, I don't care if the opponent ever changes his mind.  Likewise, I don't care about the fact that some observers will watch the debate and conclude that the theist won simply because he is on their side.  Yes, that will happen for many people, perhaps even most.

The point is meme-spreading.  Same as the show.  If that works for you, then watch debates.  If it doesn't, then don't.  Simple as that.  The real questions you should ask about the debate are:

1. Would you, personally, find it entertaining?
2. Would it help raise awareness of the atheist movement, as in the case of books by Dawkins and Hitchens, or our other shows?
3. Would it do any harm?  If so, then what?

For me, the answers are yes, yes, and no.  I hope that clarifies my intentions.

Now, I've been giving the whole matter a lot more thought.  Don't assume that I'm writing this as a plan for the ACA, but just keep it on file as potential advice for any atheist groups that might like to debate.  If you know of such a debate coming up, please link them here.

I take Eugenie Scott's "Debates and the Globetrotters" article very seriously, and I've seen my share of bad debates.  So I'd like to throw out some general bits of advice that will help in preparing any atheist debates.

Choice of venue

Many debates are hosted in a church.  This isn't necessarily wrong, but it helps to stack the audience.  Fliers can be placed in the lobby of the church a few weeks in advance, so people who like to go there anyway are more likely to be in the audience.

Here are some ideas for a more neutral venue:

1. A Unitarian church.
2. A college lecture hall. (Durston vs. Sarkar happened in a lecture hall.)
   
3. An outdoor stage.

Churches like to publicize things, so the unbelievers should do so as well.  Go after student organizations and professors.  Really hype it up at your local freethought club, if there is one.  Tell your friends.

Format

This is tricky.  Many debates I have heard turn into shouting matches, where one side loses because they are too polite to talk over the opponent. Dawkins vs. Lennox was a perfect example of this.  Without clear divisions for the speaker, the pushier guy wins.  If your debater is the pushier guy, then maybe this works for you, but personally I don't like that.

Other times, the rounds are way too long.  Some debates allow each person to speak uninterrupted for as long as 30 minutes.  That's ridiculous, and it provides way too much opportunity for the infamous "Gish gallop" that Eugenie Scott described in her article.  Also, if you watch presidential debates, that's unheard of.  Candidates get maybe five minutes for a question, tops (and usually much less).

When I did high school speech, there were two main categories: Lincoln-Douglas debate, which was a slower paced 1 on 1 debate that focused on philosophy and values; and Policy debate, a 2v2 debate focusing on concrete plans and encouraging complex speed presentations.  I was an LD debater myself, and prefer that format, as it can be difficult for a lay audience to follow the rules of a Policy debate.  However, I wouldn't be opposed to pulling in some of each type, so perhaps there would be a values-style debate with teams that would double the length of a typical LD.

In either of these formats, each side has a fixed amount of time to speak in each round, generally less than ten minutes.  There are also fixed times set for direct cross-examination, and a finite buffer of preparation time for each debater between rounds.  For public debates, I also like the style of allowing a long, structured Q&A period at the end.

Topics

Let me give you some great examples of bad debate topics, and I'll tell you why.

1. The topic of discussion in Durston vs. Sarkar was: "What is the best explanation for biological life on this planet: Intelligent Design or Darwinian evolution?"  This topic sucks.  It immediately sets up a false dichotomy, acknowledging that one or the other must be right.  "Darwinian evolution" isn't even the term used by scientists anymore, which means one side is now defending a position that he shouldn't actually have.  This topic invites the theist to completely avoid even defending the implications of Intelligent Design — let alone garden-variety creationism, or God.
   
2. Likewise, "Does God exist?" is a terrible topic of discussion.  Why?  Because there is no agreed-upon definition of "God."  Just this week, the TV email box received a letter from a very earnest person telling us that the universe is God.  Suppose your opponent opens with that... then what do you say?  "Um, I don't believe in the universe?"  Or how about "That's stupid.  The universe isn't God."  You'll spend all your time debating over whose definition is right, which I can conclusively say leads to just about the most boring debates in the world.  Most theists won't get THAT broad with their concept of God, but they'll still try to make their definition as vague and nonspecific as they can in order to cast the widest possible net.

The moral here is, don't let them get away with that.  The definitions should be agreed upon BEFORE the debate.  In a comment on the previous post, "c" suggested this:

"The debates I most enjoy are ones where the theist has to specify which religion they propose and defend it. In my opinion, they are the easiest for an atheist to win (thus the most entertaining.) They are also the most honest because if the debate is generalized to simply whether some god exists, there is often a stalemate and no one can be persuaded that way. It is also disingenuous on the theist's part because they don't just believe in some god, they believe in a specific one, which is a far more preposterous argument."

Great suggestion, c.  Why the heck don't we see more debates where the topic of discussion is "Resolved: That Southern Baptism is the true religion"?  I'll tell you why: it doesn't work for theists, as it immediately kills off a large portion of their sympathetic audience.  Resolve that a God exists, and you have 85% of every audience rooting for you, including Jews and Muslims.  Resolve that YOUR religion is right, and suddenly they're a lot less comfortable.

Splitting the difference, I think that the topics should not get as far as specifying which ecumenical council you prefer.  But I do think it's eminently fair for the topics to be narrowly focused and nail down a clear implication of who wins based on their arguments.  Here are some examples of specific religious topics that seem like they would be fun to debate.

• Resolved: That heaven exists and can be attained exclusively through faith in Jesus Christ.
  
• Resolved: That Jesus died and was resurrected in the first century AD.
• Resolved: That the Ten Commandments collectively outline a moral code that is beneficial to humanity.

You get the idea.  Now here are some other topic suggestions that don't evidently pertain to one religion, but do force a focused debate.

• Resolved: That the universe has existed for more than one million years. (Obviously this one can only be challenged by young earth creationists.  But OMG, imagine what fun it would be to actually pin someone down on really defending a young earth.)
• Resolved: That the Old Testament contains prophecies which cannot be explained by any means other than divine revelation.  (Note how the burden of proof is established right there in the resolution.)
  
• Resolved: That secondary school courses should introduce Intelligent Design as a scientific topic. (A policy topic that suits me fine.)
• Resolved: That the United States Constitution was written with the intent of creating a Christian nation.  (Watch out for those definitions again!  You may want to nail down in advance what a "Christian Nation" is.)
  

Some theists have made a career out of debating topics that look nothing like this.  They might see this as a trap and refuse to participate.  Let them refuse.  Don't yield to their terms and let them stack the deck.  Make it known that your opponent was offered a neutral debate topic to defend his particular beliefs, and he refused to get involved.  That's what Bill O'Reilly would say.  Above all else, I think it's important to set up clear standards against topics that allow a lot of weasel room for semantic games.  Ban them.

Final thought: I'd prefer to see debates held in venues where there is free wireless internet.  Use your prep time to look up and catch obvious lies.  If the debate format allows it, having a henchman behind you who can act as your Google Monkey would be ideal... and I don't necessarily see why it shouldn't be allowed.  Actually, this is a good argument for preferring 2v2 debates: one person researches while the other one talks.

If no internet is available, may I alternatively recommend that you download the contents of Iron Chariots in advance?

Atheist evangelism and the problem of infrastructure

Hi.  I've got stuff on my mind, so settle in.  This might take a while.

Yesterday I was searching through my saved media files for something to listen to, and I came across this debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox.  It's about six months old and an hour long.  Lennox is one of those smug "academic" style theologians, saying -- Ha ha -- of course the universe is fourteen billion years old, nobody seriously contests that!  But philosophers and historians alike all agree on the historical resurrection of Jesus, let me name drop a few names and throw out some academic words to blind you with my erudition.  Etc.

As I listened to this discussion, something gradually dawned on me about Richard Dawkins... he's not really very good at this.  Oh sure, Dawkins had a strong initial presentation, but in the second half, Lennox just goes steamrolling all over him, babbling about Genesis and miracles and the wonderful love of Jesus Christ, virtually uninterrupted.

A couple of times, Lennox brought up "famous scientists" (i.e., Francis Collins) who believe in God, and Dawkins responds by sounding shocked, saying something like "No, really??"  At that point I let out a big vocal "WTF???"  I'm not sure what Dawkins was sounding so shocked about... perhaps he was really trying to say "Seriously, you're not trying to use Mr. 'Waterfall Split Three Ways' to support your position, are you?"  But in the audio it came off as "Oh my goodness, I had no idea that Francis Collins was a theist!  This is a simply devastating turn of events!"

Elsewhere, Dawkins asks "You don't honestly believe in miracles like turning water into wine, do you?"  And Lennox, in his cute little Irish accent, goes "I dyoo, and let me tell ye whae."  Then he proceeds to ramble at length about the amazing creator of the universe and the awesome power of the miracles that are made possible through him.  PZ Myers had a positive spin on this debate.  He says: "Dawkins played it right, letting Lennox just run off at the mouth and expose the inanity of the theological position."

I'm sorry Paul, I love your blog dearly, but in this case you're wrong.  Dawkins did not play it right, and here's why.  The inanity of Lennox is obvious to you and me, but a Christian audience just eats that stuff up.  Even a largely neutral audience will see Lennox as winning that point, simply because it wasn't effectively challenged.

Meanwhile, as I listened to it, I could practically hear our own Matt Dillahunty's voice jumping in: "Hang on... hang on... hang on..."  Most seasoned veterans of the TV show would not let Lennox go on for so long without backing up the discussion and trying to take a closer look at some of his claims.  Had Matt or I been there, Lennox would be talking about how amazing it is that the order of creation in Genesis perfectly matches what science has discovered, and we'd jump in and yell "Plants didn't start growing before the sun existed, asshat!"

This is not an uncommon reaction for me, either.  About 90% of atheist debates I hear wind up with me grinding my teeth in frustration after a while.  There are just so many missed opportunities, so many places where I remember when the same topic came up on the show, and there's a perfect one-liner to knock it down.  But the atheist just lets it blow right on by.

On the TV show, we regularly debate people with dissenting views, by making a point of prioritizing calls from theists and others likely to disagree.  Matt, Tracie, Don, Martin, Jen, Jeff, and I, deliberately do this on a regular basis.  (I'd also throw in many past hosts and cohosts, including Ashley and Keryn.)  The response to the Atheist Experience has been enormous since we gained a YouTube presence.  We routinely receive around 10, 20, 30 emails every day at the TV address.  The chat room on a live show day contains 200-300 people.  I think part of the reason for this is because we're the only game in town: no one else does what we do, at least not as often.

As I said in my lecture about atheist evangelism, practice is absolutely the key to getting good at any game.  Only by doing such a thing repeatedly can you identify what your opponents are going to bring against you regularly.  You can have lots of theory behind you about what should work, but having to spit out a sound-bite within five seconds of hearing a common apologetic tactic is something that requires experience.  It's not that we AE members have an inherent advantage over other counter-apologists; we just do it more.

If Richard Dawkins, who is a pre-eminent scientist and the author of a best-selling book on atheism, isn't good at debating atheism in person, then who is besides us?  There aren't that many people.  I thought the Rational Response Squad did a fairly good job against the tag team of Comfort and Cameron.  Reginald Finley occasionally hosts debates, either covering the atheism side on his own, or inviting guests like Massimo Pigliucci to act as a champion.  I can't think of a lot of others.

I hate to keep picking on Richard Dawkins, but here's a relevant bit of information: he has said on multiple occasions that he won't debate creationists.  That's certainly his prerogative.  In the linked article you'll see plenty of perfectly valid reasons why it's a bad idea to debate creationists: It gives them the unwarranted appearance of credibility.  Free publicity.  A spoken debate emphasizes style over substance.  These debates are attended by a stacked and biased audience.  Etc.

Dawkins is in good company.  Stephen Jay Gould wouldn't do it either, and Eugenie Scott wrote a very persuasive article on talkorigins.org, explaining why a scientist debating a creationist is like an unprepared team going up against the Harlem Globetrotters.  Not only do they lose the game, but they wind up looking stupid while making the opposition look good.

Yeah, that's all well and good, but it's simply not true that "the only winning strategy is not to play."  If you don't play, you don't improve.  If you don't improve, you can never win.  Then creationists get the upper hand anyway, because they get to crow about how "everyone is scared to debate me."

Here's a big problem: atheists and scientists who would be debaters have no infrastructure to back them up.  There are a lot of professional apologists, who practically have a job description of traveling around the country debating people.  William Lane Craig springs to mind.  Also, I heard that PZ Myers debated Kirk Durston over the weekend.  I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but the name of the opponent stood out for me because I've heard Durston debate before, years ago.  I wrote the report on it, in fact.  So Durston is a pro at this: he flies around the country, and wherever he goes, he debates people who are not professional apologists; they are local professors like Sahotra Sarkar.  Smart guys, yes, but they have day jobs and lives.  They don't debate for a living.  Par for the course, I think.

People pay to fly William Lane Craig to a university as the champion in a debate.  It's one of the perks of having an organization that people tithe to.  Nobody pays for regular travel for atheist champions.  They don't offer speaker fees for a professional on the other side.

Note that I'm not necessarily saying that the Atheist Experience team are the right ones for the job.  I do think that any one of us would stack up well against most opponents.  I would love to debate Bill Dembski on the identity of the intelligent designer sometime, and I bet Matt would jump at the chance to go after Ray Comfort face-to-face.  On the other hand, the TV show offers a lot of home field advantages that we would have to do without in a live debate.  Stuff like having a hold button, for example.  Standing side by side with Ray Comfort, there is no opportunity to say "I'm sorry, you have repeated this bullshit three times now, I'm hanging up on you."  Also, it's certainly clear that the people whom we debate regularly are amateurs, often repeating arguments that they don't really understand.

What I'm saying, though, is it doesn't much matter who the professional atheist debater is; there needs to be one, and he or she needs practice on a regular basis.  And it would also be cool if there were occasional conferences with round table discussions and lectures on how to do this properly, as well as a team of diverse experts to offer serious post-mortem analysis of any debates that happen.

There are many advantages to having an established counter-apologist debater.  Local professors would not feel the pressure to do something they are bad at, thinking "If I don't do this then no one will."  The chosen spokesperson would get to do regular debates, which would help him or her improve and gain insight into the process which could then be passed along to others.  The spokesperson would also gain some notoriety and be a focal point for interviews for the atheist movement.  Apologists would probably jump at the chance to try and defeat this person -- which effectively flips the usual equation of not wanting to grant creationists unwarranted credibility.  Atheists don't have credibility in pop culture; theists do.  In science, the reverse is true; creationists are the outsiders.

Here's the bottom line: it's all too common for atheists to assume that the ridiculousness of religion should be apparent to everyone.  The facts should speak for themselves, we say.  Well, they don't.  Facts don't speak, people do.  Apologists use rhetorical tricks and live debates because it's a good forum to gain media attention.  So what are we going to say -- that we should abandon this medium to them?  Why?  Are atheists just inherently dumber than theists when it comes to style and charisma?  No, I don't think so.  This is a shortcoming that needs to be corrected, and the time to start is now.