CalvinDude.com

I just got back from a week-long conference (well, just under a week-long). But I see that William Birch has responded to my previous post. He actually misunderstood it exactly the way I had foreseen he would :-D

Birch writes:

But inherent in Peter’s confession here are at least two significations: 1) there is an admission that Calvinism must be taught; i.e., Calvinism is not the result of a plain reading of the text; and 2) Calvinism has a tendency to breed Gnostic proclivities in its adherents.

First off, the Gnostic comment is not only false, but inflammatorily so. Birch knows that to accuse a Christian of “Gnostic proclivities” is a strong charge, and needs to be strongly demonstrated. Am I to conclude that when he reads Deuteronomy 29:29, he concludes Moses was a Gnostic?

But that well-poisoning he has committed is irrelevant. My comment in no way is an “admission that Calvinism must be taught” – at least, not any more so than any other theology (see Romans 10, specifically verse 17). Rather, as I stated, my point was a response to the ridiculous claim that members of SEA have made, and which Birch continues to repeat, that one naturally reads Arminianism in the Bible.

(By the way, it really does annoy me that Birch and company seem to think that Christians are magically enabled to understand Scripture instantly without putting forth any study into it, and completely ignoring the rich history of Christian thought throughout the ages. I in no way deny the perspicuity of Scripture here, but the reality is that the Bible is a book and it takes thought to understand the passages presented. No one should doubt that the Ethiopian eunuch was an intelligent man—for he was literate in a time when most people were not, and was also a court official—yet he said to Philip, “How can I understand [Isaiah] unless someone explains it to me?” Furthermore, teaching is a gift of the Spirit. Not all are able to rightly divide the Word of truth. That Scripture is clear enough for any who hears it to be saved does not mean that it is clear enough for everyone who hears it to be Billy Graham, R.C. Sproul, Billy Birch, or James White. But enough of this tangent.)

I fear that Birch is in a bit of a bubble here, as are (sadly) most of the people I’ve interacted with at SEA. Because they are in an Arminian bubble, they view the world through their Arminian lenses. It is natural that they would believe the Bible teaches Arminianism, since they believe that to be the case. Yet, I’ve talked to several people (including on this conference I just attended), and the fact of the matter is that the average Christian does not find Arminianism in the Bible. Instead, what he finds can be summed up this way (to paraphrase my roommate at this convention): “I don’t know what I believe. I read passages on predestination and I start going, well, yeah, it’s in there. Then I read, ‘Whosoever will’ and swing back the other way. I just don’t know which way to go half the time.”

If Birch’s claim is even accurate (BTW: he asked me for my numbers when I was relating my anecdotal evidence to him; but I was responding to his anecdote, and he needs to bring forth some numbers showing all these supposed new Christians who immediately spout Arminianism), it is because A) most Christians haven’t read anything other than what has been cherry-picked for them to read by their pastor; B) they lack the context to understand Scripture.

I think it truly telling that the less Biblical knowledge that the average Christian has, as can be demonstrated from any Pew Poll you’d like to look at comparing Christians today with Christians 100 years ago, the smaller the Reformed movement gets per capita. You never find ignorant Christians creating something like Reformed theology. You find them creating emergent churches that worship free will, they start to deny the existence and reality of hell, they begin to doubt sin is real, etc. Nowhere do ignorant Christians manufacture Reformation theology.

In any case, I will have more to say later, but for now it’s time to wind down from my trip.

HT: Patrick Chan

In the comments of my original post on Heaven’s Gate, Charles Sebold asked which documentary I had seen. I intended to respond earlier, but since I didn’t get around to it, I figured a new post might be better since others are probably interested too. You can actually watch the video on YouTube right now. The first segment is located here.

Just a reminder that in some places, being a Christian still means something more than slapping “WWJD” on your bumper before you go 80 MPH through downtown to “witness” to the cops….

I recently pulled up an old article I wrote back in 2008 called On the “Appropriate” Apologetic Method and noticed that there was a comment from Truth Unites…and Divides from 2009 that I wish I had seen back then! But, this being the Internet where old threads are resurrected for no apparent reason all the time, I figured I might as well bring up a two-year-old comment and examine it here.

My original article dealt with a troubling trend I see in many presuppositionalists. Mostly it’s the Clarkian Scripturalists, but VanTillians fall into it too. Namely, many presuppositionalists treat presuppositionalism as an immunization to debate such that the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) substitutes for actually thinking about things. The result is a knee-jerk reaction that “if it ain’t TAG, it’s of the devil.” My point in the previous article was to demonstrate that it was not sinful to use evidential arguments at all, and in fact it was much more useful to use those types of arguments when dealing with the average man-on-the-street than the philosophically intense TAG is.

One particularly important quote (as it relates to my current post) was:

I would point out, however, that the Bible does use evidential arguments from time to time too. For instance, when Scripture says in Psalm 19:1 that the heavens declare the glory of God, David is referring to how God’s glory is manifested in nature. It is evidenced by nature itself. And Paul echoes that in Romans 1 as well, saying that God’s attributes are seen in what has been made.

TUAD quoted from my article in a discussion thread he was on, and then posted the response he received from Ronald Di Giacomo, which began:

How do you know that the Heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture?

This is precisely the attitude that the cage-stage presuppositionalists fall into that I was critiquing in my original post. Consider for a moment what the question entails. If it is impossible to know that the heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture, then in what way can you say the heavens declare anything? How is it a “declaration” if one needs Scripture in order to know something’s being declared? Or is the assumption that the heavens didn’t declare the glory of God until the Psalmist penned his words? Such a concept seems absurd.

Furthermore, when looked at how Paul uses the concept in Romans 1 we’d see that this question would turn Paul’s argument on its head. Paul argues in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed against unbelievers, and gives the reason in verse 19-20: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” If nature was insufficient to demonstrate “what can be known about God” including his invisible attributes like his eternal power and divine nature, then unbelievers would have an excuse not to believe. We do not need Romans 1 or Psalm 19 to be convicted for not believing in God, for creation itself testifies to the existence of God. So how do we know the heavens declare the glory of God apart from Scripture? Because the heavens actually DO declare the glory of God.

Di Giacomo continued:

Accordingly, to defend that premise with any absolute authority other than Scripture is sin. To do anything less is to make something other than God’s word your ultimate authority, which is again sin.

First of all, I don’t understand what “authority” has to do with anything here. We’re talking about objective truth, and the only authority objective truth needs is its own truth-value. But this falls prey to a logical problem even if we accept the authority issue. Di Giacomo believes Scripture is authoritative, and Scripture itself declares that creation even apart from Scripture manifests the nature and attributes of God such that men who suppress the truth of God are without excuse. That means that if Di Giacomo is to respect the authority of Scripture, he ought to acknowledge that nature does what Scripture claims nature does. To do otherwise is to deny what Scripture says, which hardly makes God’s word “your ultimate authority” and which, following his logic above, makes it sin.

Di Giacomo then has a couple of statements which do not seem to apply to what I wrote. I could not tell whether he was questioning TUAD or something else entirely. But let me address them anyway. He said:

Philosophically, you have yet to show how it is possible to justify the truth of the premises used in an evidentialist or Thomistic approach.

Of course, I was not defending Thomism in my original article (this is partly why I assume this question is not directed toward me), and as I pointed out even evidential arguments must, if one meets a philosophically savvy opponent, reach the presuppositional level. But Scripture itself allows us to justify evidentalist arguments regarding the invisible attributes of God listed in Romans 1, since Scripture maintains both that these are objective truths and that these truths are knowable even independent of Scripture. This can even be expanded by including the aspects of the law that are written even on the hearts of Gentiles that Paul mentions in Romans 2:15.

Di Giacomo continued:

Moreover, how does one get from an assertion that is not justified from Scripture (such as that the Heavens declare God’s glory) to the conclusion of the Ontological Trinity of Scripture?

I assume that he meant that the statement “the Heavens declare God’s glory” is justified from Scripture, since it is Psalm 19:1. But this argument about the Ontological Trinity does not help Di Giacomo either. To use an example I got from Paul Manata (see here), suppose that I held to every Christian presupposition except that I believe God is four persons instead of three. Is TAG sufficient to refute that view? No, because it is hard to see how there would be a logical inconsistency within the worldview that stipulated there was an unstated (by Scripture) fourth person in the Trinity. At best, one could conclude that it’s unfounded to assert there’s a fourth person, but since neither Father, Son, nor Spirit are denied, a “quadune” God is just as logically consistent under TAG as a triune God is.

The reality is that Di Giacomo does not believe in the Trinity because of his presuppositional arguments; rather, he believes Scripture and Scripture says the Trinity exists. Yet the evidentialist also believes in the Trinity because he believes Scripture and Scripture says the Trinity exists! Di Giacomo may argue that he has a better justification to believe the validity of Scripture due to his presuppositional arguments, but even if the evidentialist has erroneous reasons to trust in the validity of Scripture, once he does trust the validity of Scripture he comes to the same beliefs about the Trinity that the presuppositionalist does. So to argue the logical chain used to get to the Trinity is a red herring. One need only be able to argue to the validity of Scripture, something that evidentialists are actually quite good at accomplishing despite handicapping themselves by allowing atheists to dictate the terms of the debate.

Either way, it seems to me that he does not reach Paul’s attitude:

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. (Philippians 1:15-18)

Di Giacomo concluded his comment thus:

What you’re not grasping is that although men know God by nature, any appeal to that truth is not an apologetic nor justifiable apart from Scripture. That premise must be justified somehow, mustn’t it?

I have to admit that I’m hard-pressed to understand how an appeal to truth is not an apologetic, especially when it’s a truth the apostle Paul used in his own defense of the Gospel. Furthermore, I would like to see Di Giacomo demonstrate from Scripture his claim that all premises must be justified from Scripture.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/video/male-acrobats-go-topless-for-pope-benedict-12410248.

Yet another something that speaks for itself…

God gave us an infallible authority on Earth so we can know the truth, and that authority is the pope, who is always right. Except when he’s not. And you can tell which he is because a later pope or church council informs you of which he was. Unless an even later church council says that particular church council is wrong, usually after an even later pope says the previous later pope erred. And we know the later-later pope is actually correct because there isn’t yet a later-later-later pope than this current-later pope who corrected the later pope that verified/refuted the original pope. And there is no later-later-later council to dispute either current-pope or current-council, since the later-later-council hasn’t been formed yet either.

How could anyone get more certainty than from this process?

Too bad for Dave I can post my comments in a forum [Triablogue & here--ed. mistyped this last night when I posted] that receives far more than double the hits per day he gets, so when he deletes them it only means more people read them. Here’s a comment I submitted:

Adomnan said:
—
This is enough to put you in the “nutjob” category. Anyone who believes that YEC is “credible” is a kook.
—

Adomnan, have you ever heard of me before?

Nope.

But Dave thinks so highly of me that he’s placed me “Among Leading Online Anti-Catholic Protestant Fundamentalists.” I’m leading the pack here. Right up there with Sproul and White!

It must break Dave’s heart to know I don’t care about him at all, that I only came here because TUAD mentioned it and I only commented because I found it so hilarious he put *ME* in another one of his stupid lists.

I can’t help that he’s so incompetent that he forgot how I told him three years ago (back when he called me just a “Lesser-Known Anti-Catholic”) that I wasn’t YEC. Check it for yourself: http://calvindude.com/dude/2007/10/02/a-lesser-known-anti-catholic/

I said on October 2, 2007:
—
I really loved this, especially since I’m not even YEC (as if YEC has any bearing on Dave Armstrong’s misuse of Scripture).
—

And now all you can do, Adomnan, is twist a comment I wrote on Triablogue. You didn’t read the whole thing, and there’s a *REASON* Dave didn’t post the whole thing (because he knows if he posts the whole thing everyone will realize he’s conducting a shell game here).

Dave doesn’t care about the truth, and it’s obvious you don’t either. You just have an agenda, and a need to twist everything into conformity with your false beliefs.

But who am I to lecture you? Oh yeah: I’m a leading online anti-Catholic.

And you still take anything Dave says seriously? Who’s the kook now?

The truth apparently hurts Dave, as he immediately deleted my comment. But now the world knows what he tried to hide.

“…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.