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Some people claim that 2 + 2 = 4 in base 10 math. But think about this for a moment. Someone could claim that 2 + 2 = 5. Or that 2 + 2 = 7,380,934. Now here’s the thing about that. Those people who would say the answer to 2 + 2 is some particular answer or another are typically those people who fit into a certain demographic (i.e., those who come up with counterarguments to poor reasoning may be culturally biased toward stating 2 + 2 = 5). So we can use the OTF to examine whether it is right in treating any answer to 2 + 2 as valid.

Now there are essentially an infinite number of answers you could claim satisfy 2 + 2. Yet certain mathematicians will insist that 2 + 2 = 4 in all cases in base 10 math. Even facing the OTF, they insist their answer could be the only correct one.

Fine. I understand this and I grant it. Even though their particular brand of mathematical solution has a low probability to it they could still have the correct answer after all. At this point though, they are talking about possibilities. Their answer could still be true even though the odds are their answer is wrong. This is sort of like winning the lottery when there are an infinite number of mathematical tickets to draw out of a barrel. The odds are 1 in infinity but that doesn’t give any one of them pause. Even if we pare the possible solutions down to positive whole numbers, acknowledging the rest are negatives or fractions or even irrational numbers, this still doesn’t change much of anything, nor would it give them any pause. Why? Because they have done a dance that I now call The Delusional Sidestep (TDS). Since the consequences of the demographic data are quickly recognized by them to require the OTF they make a quick sidestep to avoid it by claiming they could still be right despite the odds. Wait just a minute!? What about the odds? Ahhh, just ignore them we’re told. There is nothing to see here. Move along. We prefer our delusion to the actual probabilities.

Remember, it doesn’t matter that someone can provide actual reasons why one answer is valid and another isn’t. WE MUST NOT IGNORE THE ODDS! Why, any statistician would agree with me here. What are the odds the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy? Well, there are 195 countries in the world now, so the answer is 1 in 195. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that the Roman Empire was located in present-day Italy. What are the odds that Obama is president of the United States? Well, the population of the United States is 307,006,550, so the answer is 1 in 307,006,550. Obviously, therefore, it is not at all likely that Obama is president of the United States.

It’s obvious to any intelligent person that there are far more ways for a factual question to be answered incorrectly than correctly, and therefore the odds that any particular answer is actually true is quite low. Therefore, if you make a factual claim, the OTF says you’re talking bunk so I don’t have to listen to a single thing you say. Only a non-scholar could possibly disagree with my brilliance.

“…this book will destroy Christianity.”

Those words by atheist Michael Martin are located in the blurb he wrote that appears on the back cover of The Christian Delusion, edited by John Loftus (speaking of back cover blurbs, Dale C. Allison, Jr. starts his blurb by instructing us to “Forget Dawkins” and that’s sage advice no matter who gives it). Furthermore, Keith Parsons states of The Christian Delusion that “there can have been few works as effective” at debunking Christianity. Ken Pulliam states: “It demonstrates that those who believe in the tenets of evangelical Christianity truly are deluded.”

The book contains chapters written by a wide range of modern atheists, including Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Edward T. Babinski[*]. (If those names sound familiar it’s because we’ve engaged with each of them many times on Triablogue.) Of his contribution to the book, Carrier slapped both of his chapters with a “tour de force” label and confidently assured us, “I doubt I’ll ever have to write another [refutation of the resurrection].” He says: “My debunking of [Christian claims on science] is so decisive in this chapter, you won’t need to refer anyone anywhere else.”

But such hubris vastly overreaches reality, and Triablogue is here to demonstrate it with The Infidel Delusion.

The Infidel Delusion was written (in alphabetical order) by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays, and Paul Manata. This is a true tour de force. By the time I got to Manata’s debunking of Valerie Tarico’s naturalistic reductionism in chapter two, the perfect metaphor had formed in my head: Collectively, these Triabloggian authors were firing intellectual howitzer shells point-blank into a cardboard shanty town.

Each chapter of The Christian Delusion is thoroughly debunked by Hay’s philosophical and theological acumen, Engwer’s encyclopedic knowledge of history, Chan’s medical training, and/or Manata’s philosophical prowess. Contrary to the tactic The Christian Delusion used—to attack the weakest arguments put forth in the name of Christianity—the authors of The Infidel Delusion dismantled the strongest arguments atheists had to offer. Indeed, if there truly are “few works as effective” as The Christian Delusion, as Parsons claimed, then Triablogue shows atheism to be in a sad state indeed.

A Quick Overview of What’s in The Infidel Delusion
After introductions from Hays, Engwer, and Manata, the debunking of The Christian Delusion begins. In chapter one, Eller’s entire premise is shown to be at odds with the rest of The Christian Delusion, making that book internally incoherent. Eller’s belief that there is no real Christianity, but instead thousands of Christianities, actually destroys the basis for The Christian Delusion by rendering the idea that there is such a thing as Christianity (singular) to refute moot. If atheists are to be consistent, either Eller’s contribution must go or it must stand alone.

Chapter two shows Tarico’s cognitive research to be nowhere near adequate to explain what she thinks it explains. In addition to being self-refuting, Manata makes an excellent case that Tarico doesn’t even understand the issues involved in naturalism and scientific reductionism. Additionally, Chan includes a great deal on the medical issues involved, including debunking the idea that Paul’s vision of Christ on the Road to Damascus could be explained by a frontal lobe seizure.

Chapter three deals with Long’s attempt to show cultural background determines how one will believe. This sort of cultural relativism is a double-edged sword, however. If it works against Christianity, it is only at the expense of destroying atheism in the process.

Chapter four gets us to the heart of The Christian Delusion, the Outsider Test for Faith that forms the key of Loftus’s atheistic apologetic. Hays demonstrates how Loftus doesn’t consistently apply this test since it equally destroys his own view. Engwer shows that the attitude Loftus has about how beliefs are formed doesn’t cohere to Christian experience. And finally, Manata demonstrates that the outsider test is “vague, ambiguous, invalid, unsound, superfluous, informally fallacious, and subject to a defeater-deflector.”

Chapter five reviews Babinski’s flawed view of Jewish cosmology based on uncharitable assumptions about the stupidity of ancient people and their lack of ability to understand figurative language; chapter six shows Tobin’s repeating of common objections to Scripture (creating “dilemma” by ignoring all conservative scholarship, and even most liberal scholarship); and chapter seven refutes Loftus’s claim that Scripture is unclear, ironically in part by showing that if Loftus’s chapter is true, Babinski’s and Tobin’s must be false! But internal consistency is not something The Christian Delusion was concerned with.

Chapter eight deals with Avalos’s claims that Yahweh is a “moral monster.” Yet this once again requires us to reject Loftus’s chapter seven, and furthermore Avalos’s moral relativism defeats his own argument.

Chapter nine deals with concepts of animal suffering as evidence for the non-existence of God. Amongst other arguments, Hays deftly shows how Loftus’s claims are unsupported anthropomorphisms, while Engwer focuses on the ludicrous demands Loftus requires of believers to “answer” this “problem” and Manata shows Loftus’s argument is really nothing short of wishful thinking completely divorced from the Christian theology it was supposed to debunk.

Chapter ten reviews Price’s misuse of methodological naturalism, including the fact that Price actually ignores the vast majority of modern scholarship in rejecting the very existence of Jesus as a historical figure. Chapter eleven examines similar weaknesses of methodology in the claims Carrier makes regarding the resurrection.

Chapter twelve examines Loftus’s poor exegetical skills and his inability to understand even simple Biblical passages in context. In critiquing Christian prophecy, Loftus manages to all but ignore the preterist movement and makes some rather basic label errors on the positions he does look at.

Chapter thirteen deals with Eller’s moral claims, especially in light of his rejection of objective morality. The Infidel Delusion shows how his evolutionary claims are insufficient to create any type of morality.

Chapter fourteen shows that Avalos’s argument that atheism didn’t cause the Holocaust is irrelevant to the issue of whether Christianity is true. Finally, chapter fifteen shows that Carrier’s historical claims that Christians are not responsible for modern science is both irrelevant to the issue of the truth of Christianity as well as focused on the wrong issues, even within the context of his argument.

The last section of The Infidel Delusion consists of ten appendices that give us more detail into some of the arguments presented within the various chapters, as well as a look at some of the specific claims made by contributors to The Christian Delusion outside of the scope of that actual book.

Conclusion
The Infidel Delusion debunks the entirety of The Christian Delusion. This is not to say it addresses every single flaw in The Christian Delusion—such would take multiple volumes. But there is no major claim made in The Christian Delusion that withstands the criticism leveled at it in The Infidel Delusion. As Steve Hays wrote in his introduction, “…if The Christian Delusion turns out to be just another white elephant in the overcrowded zoo of militant atheism, then that‘s a vindication of the Christian faith.”

The Infidel Delusion certainly demonstrates this.

Full disclosure: While I did not contribute any writing to The Infidel Delusion, I did edit, collate, and format the ebook.

UPDATE:
[*] To be fair, Babinski classifies himself as an agnostic.

Arminians often attempt to insulate God from moral complaints against His sovereignty by falling back to the “permissive” argument. For example, in dealing with the problem of evil, they assert that God does not deterministically cause any evil to occur, but instead He merely allows it to happen, and because he permits it instead of ordaining it, He is somehow no longer culpable. On Triablogue, we’ve often discussed this issue and why it isn’t defensible on philosophical grounds for an Arminian to claim that permission could exempt God from culpability. In the process, we’ve also made many exegetical arguments for our position as well. I do not wish to rehash old ground anew, but instead to add yet one more Scriptural proof that permission alone is insufficient to exempt someone from culpability. And that Scriptural proof is found in the Law of Moses.

Exodus 21:28 states:

When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.

Now an ox is an animal, and as such it as a rudimentary will. It is not an inanimate object, in other words, and it will often do things that the owner does not wish for it to do. Anyone who has ever owned livestock—or even pets, for that matter—knows of the frustration of wanting an animal to do something and the animal not doing it.

What is clear from this verse is that the owner of the ox is not held responsible for the actions of the ox. Presumably, this would be due to the fact that the ox’s will is not the owner’s will, and that is why the owner is not liable. The owner did not wish for the ox to kill anyone, the owner did not plan for this, therefore the owner is not culpable.

Thus far, it looks like this would be evidence for the position that if God permits something evil to occur He is not culpable for that. However, the very next verse reads:

But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.

And here we see that the escape to “permission” cannot remove culpability from God. For we see that it is still the case that the owner of the ox does not will that the ox gore anyone, and we still see that the owner does not plan this event to happen, yet nevertheless the owner is held responsible with the same penalty imposed as if he had murdered the man himself. Why is the owner culpable? Because he did not take measures needed to reign in an ox “accustomed to gore.” He is negligent for not stopping that which he knew was dangerous, and therefore he receives the same penalty as if he had personally acted instead of the ox.

It seems to me that this verse neutralizes not only all Arminian arguments designed to exculpate God, but it even neutralizes Open Theist arguments. For the Arminian is now in the unenviable position of acknowledging that God has exhaustive foreknowledge and knows not only which ox will gore which person, but also which person will murder another. And if the owner of an ox is culpable when he knows full well that he has a dangerous ox, then God surely must likewise be culpable if He knows full well that a created being He put on Earth is a danger to others. Likewise, the Open Theist is not let off the hook because even if God did not know at first the human beings were going to commit evil, once they did and He did not take measures to restrain that evil, then this verse would show God is just as guilty as if He Himself did the evil. So clearly, the argument that “permission” exculpates is invalidated by the Law itself.

Now for the record, and because I know that some will misread what I write here, I am not saying that it really is the case that God is culpable for evil and that Arminians will just need to learn to deal with it like we icky determinists do. Rather, I am only saying that one cannot escape to “permission” to get God “off the hook” given the typical starting point of morality that most Arminians (and not only Arminians, mind you) have. Since I am a Divine Command Theorist, then my own position doesn’t start where there’s does. Indeed, I don’t have to use “permission” to get God “off the hook” because God is never on the hook to begin with under DCT.

William Birch has been doing a series on eschatology over on his blog and I typically disagree with almost everything Birch writes… :-D

This time, however, I’ve found his posts to be quite useful for sparking thought and they also provide a good bit of relevant background data, and I don’t feel the need to try to try to refute the few areas we disagree on.

Eschatology is a very divisive thing in modern Christiandom, and sadly so. I say “sadly so” because in my opinion it’s about the least important systematized Christian doctrine. The broad outline is not trivial, of course—but then every view holds the broad picture to be the same: in the end, Jesus wins. I’m talking about the particulars: whether someone is premillennial, postmillennial, or Biblically sound amillennial. Add on the fact that we have people who are pre-, mid-, or post-tribulation too. Then there’s the Preterist movement, which consists of full preterism, partial-preterism, and historic preterism, and probably a few other adjectives too.

One thing about eschatology is clear, and that’s that eschatology isn’t very clear at all. The proof of that is found not only in the wide variety of doctrinal positions, but also in the fact that there don’t seem to be much “connective tissue” between the various sub-levels of positions. True, there are general trends. For instance, preterism doesn’t seem to be all that popular amongst dispensational circles (mostly due to the fact that dispensationals tend to be premillennial, whereas preterists tend to be a- or postmillennial). However, it’s still not unheard of to have a dispensational preterist.

In fact, if we randomly assigned various labels from eschatology, I doubt most people would say, “Wait a minute, those views don’t go together.” In other words, someone could say they’re a post-trib amillinial dispensationalist and another could say he’s a pre-trib covenantal historical premillinialist and none of us will cry out that it’s a contradiction. On the other hand, have someone say, “As a Calvinist, I hold to Libertarian Free Will” and you’re going to see sparks fly.

As I said, this shows me that Biblical teaching on eschatology is not very clear at all. Now since I believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, someone might ask me why that wouldn’t cause tension in my view. Well, I believe that the Bible is clear on the subjects that it needs to be clear on—the important issues. And in the issues where the Bible is less clear, then it is not as vital that we know what’s put forth.

Now that is not to say that it’s pointless, or that somehow eschatological texts are somehow “less Scripture.” But God Himself prioritizes within Scripture, holding some things to be more important for us to know than others. Indeed, in the end, He withholds certain things from us, saying that the secret things belong to Him alone.

So when it comes to eschatology, I have no qualms whatsoever at saying, “I have no confidence at all in my understanding of this particular passage.” That said, it doesn’t hurt to hash things out, to think about Scripture amongst fellow believers, and try to gain some further understanding. So long as we don’t become sola eschatologists then we’re fine.

With that in mind, I want to share the comments (typos and all) that I left on William’s post about the 70 weeks of Daniel:

Part of the problem with the numbers involved is the fact that Hebrew numerology was just plain weird (as far as modern Americans are concerned). For example, look at how Matthew displayed the geneology of Jesus so that there would be 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Babylon, and 14 from Babylon to Christ.

BTW, if we take 490 (as 70 x 7) and divide by 14, we get a generation of 35 years. That seems almost twice as long as a “typical” generation, especially when you consider that under the Roman empire the average life expectency was only around 30 (for instance, one site claims: “On average, the life expectancy at birth of women was between 20 and 30 years and that of men a bit higher”).

So, with that in mind, it’s quite plausible that the 70 weeks (or “weeks of years”) in Daniel may have little to nothing to actually do with length of time, and a whole lot more to do with some Hebrew numerological concepts.

Further, our modern concept of time is very foreign to the ANE mindset. For one thing, today we measure things to fractions of a second, and we’ve structured our lives on strictly following a rigid clock; but back then, there were no clocks. Best you got was a sundial, or maybe a water-drip or hourglass type of a thing. But our fascination with time and getting things exact wasn’t something shared by shepherds. This means that there can be an aweful lot of “rounding” going on, and it wouldn’t have concerned anyone.

Combining numerological ideas with this rounding “error rate” (for lack of a better term) has some interesting applications. For us today, we usually round to the nearest 100, 500, or 1000 when speaking of years. So we say Christ came 2000 years ago, even though it’s probably about 2014-2016 by now. Or we say that the Reformation started 500 years ago. Etc. These numbers are the kind we gravitate toward.

But consider the case of 500. If you were predisposed to considering multiples of 7 to be “holy”, it might very well be that you’d round 500 to 490, so it would by 70 x 7. So something happening 500 years from now, perhaps, you’d say was happening in 70 times 7 years. This isn’t a violation or an error anymore than us saying Christ came 2000 years ago is an error. It’s a rounding principal.

For reasons such as these, I don’t take the numbers in Daniel as requiring literalistic interpretations. That said, I do find it interesting that you can get a count that gets fairly close to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD; but I just don’t have any confidence in any of those interpretations in the end.

(Again, this is all my opinion and I don’t begrudge anyone’s disagreement.)

…

By the way, William, one other thing that may be of interest to you in your studies here is the use of Hebrew codes. By this I don’t mean the nonsense that was profligated by “The Bible Code” a decade ago. Instead, I mean such things as the “atbash” (i.e., “Sheshach” standing for “Babylon”). This shows that the Hebrews did have a rudimentary (for our times) system of encryption. And it’s also important to remember that Daniel was in the Babylonian courts (albeit as a POW, but he was still trained as a wise man) and so could have been familiar with Babylonian encryption techniques too. I haven’t had time myself to delve into any of that in detail, but depending on how much work you want to do it’s a possible path to search too. :-)

One potential objection that I want to address would be the charge that if we say that we cannot come to a full understanding of the 70 weeks in Daniel, then it was pointless for God to inspire that passage. Let us suppose that it is impossible for us to ever learn what was meant there, not just in practice but in theory too. Does that make the passage pointless to us now?

I argue that it does not render the passage pointless for at least two reasons. First, we know that the passage meant something to Daniel. When the passage was penned, it had immediate significance to that audience. Even if we are unable to discern what that meaning is, it tells us that God worked through Daniel for His purposes. And secondly, it shows us that God is proactive and responds to His people’s prayers. He doesn’t abandon them in captivity in a foreign country. He is there, with them. Both of these concepts are demonstrated, even if full interpretation is impossible. And I don’t believe it is impossible in theory, even if perhaps in practice we will never figure it out this side of heaven.